Back on my travels

I’ve enjoyed 2 glorious days working at or around my desk in Falmouth – a welcome change from constant travel. As well as responding to the never-ending round of emails and phone calls, its been a chance to respond to the 41 (this morning) enquiries from principals interested in the IDH Private proposition – and wanting to know what we have to offer. This sheer number of enquiries has been a pleasant surprise but I am now having to prioritise the enquiries and make sure that everyone has an acknowledgment and a time-scale. A common question is around whether the funding is still in place, given the current global situation – the answer is a very definite “yes”. I have also invested a lot of my time these last 2 days in getting my head around the valuation model that we are going to use – and the somewhat head-banging concept of EBITDA. There are many principals out there who have been caught up in the conversation about corporates paying multiples of gross revenue – 100%,120% etc. Its not quite that simple – and, post-Iceland, probably not going to be as generous going forward. The financial team at IDH have been helping me to construct a valuation template for private practice that takes into account as many of the idiosyncrasies as we can before due diligence. That should be enough to enable good conversations – and that will be tested today as I visit two practices to discuss the proposition, the numbers and take a look around the practice. I’ll also be taking my colleague and Operations Director, Matt Jackson, to visit one of my favourite private practices – just so that he can see “how its done” (not to buy it by the way). 48 hours of travel to follow – back on the road again.