Results

What Preparation Actually Changes.

These outcomes come from engagements where financial data preparation happened before the buyer, lender, or investor arrived — not during due diligence.

Outcomes

What AJM Engagements Deliver

$1.2M+
Undocumented EBITDA add-backs surfaced in a single diagnostic engagement

3 weeks
Data room build time for a client with 22 years of pre-cleaned financials

Pre-LOI
working capital target set and documented before signing — eliminating post-close dispute risk

12–18 mos
Typical lead time where preparation produces the largest outcome improvement

Case Studies

Engagements and Outcomes

Details are anonymized to protect client confidentiality. Industry, revenue range, and engagement type are accurate.

Succession Advisory

Manufacturing

$18M Revenue — Alberta

EBITDA Normalization

Situation

Owner was 18 months from a planned sale. Business had 24 years of operation, strong revenue, and consistent profitability — but the financial statements included significant owner-specific expenses, one-time costs, and non-cash items that were never formally documented as add-backs. EBITDA as reported was understated versus what a normalized view would show.

Result

The Data Diagnostic identified $1.2M in documentable EBITDA add-backs across the three-year lookback period. Each was documented with supporting schedules. The normalized EBITDA package was provided to the CBV for valuation and to the M&A advisor for the information memorandum. The owner entered the sale process with a defensible, documented EBITDA figure — not one the buyer’s due diligence team could negotiate down.

Succession Advisory

Professional Services

$7M Revenue — Alberta

Data Room & Due Diligence

Situation

A 22-year-old professional services business with a strong reputation and stable client base. The owners had engaged an M&A advisor and were 90 days from going to market. Their concern: they’d never been through a sale process and had no idea whether their financial records were in a state a buyer could work with.

Result

AJM completed a pre-market diagnostic in 5 weeks. The financial records were largely clean — the primary work was organizing, labelling, and packaging them into a structured data room format. The data room build took three weeks. When the buyer’s due diligence team began their review, the buying-side M&A counsel noted that the financial package was unusually well-organized. The due diligence process completed in four weeks with no material price adjustments based on financial data quality.

Succession Advisory

Trades & Contracting

$24M Revenue — Alberta

working capital target

Situation

A trades business with significant seasonal variability in working capital. The owner had received a term sheet and was six months from expected close. Working capital had not been defined or baselined in the term sheet — the buyer had proposed a standard NWC target that did not reflect the business’s actual seasonal pattern.

Result

AJM documented 24 months of working capital data, calculated the business-specific working capital target using the trailing average methodology, and provided a written position paper for the owner’s legal counsel to use in negotiation. The peg was set before the LOI was finalized — eliminating the risk of a post-close working capital adjustment that could have been a six-figure reduction to the purchase price.

Fractional CFO

Distribution

$12M Revenue — Alberta

Reporting Infrastructure

Situation

Growing distribution business with a 14-person team. Owner was making procurement, hiring, and pricing decisions based on monthly financial statements that arrived 3–4 weeks after month-end and didn’t break out margin by product category. The business had a bookkeeper and an external accountant — neither was producing decision-quality reporting.

Result

AJM designed and implemented a management reporting package including gross margin by product category, rolling 13-week cash flow, and a monthly KPI dashboard. Month-end close was compressed from 28 days to 9 days. The owner identified two product categories with negative contribution margin that had been invisible in prior reporting — and repriced them within 60 days of implementation.

Diagnostic Findings

What the Data Diagnostic Typically Finds

These are the categories of findings that appear most consistently across AJM diagnostic engagements. Not every engagement has all of these — but most have at least three.

Undocumented EBITDA Add-Backs

Owner compensation above market rate, personal expenses run through the business, non-recurring costs that should be excluded from normalized EBITDA. Without documentation, a buyer applies their own adjustments — which are never in your favour.

Working Capital Baseline Missing

No documented working capital target or NWC analysis. The business has never calculated what “normal” working capital looks like on a trailing 12-month basis. This becomes expensive when a buyer proposes their own target.

Revenue Quality Not Assessed

Recurring vs. project vs. concentrated revenue is not broken out in any reporting. Acquirers and lenders apply significant discounts to revenue that appears non-recurring or concentrated — even when it’s actually stable.

Cost Structure Not Visible at Management Level

Gross margin and contribution margin by product, service, or customer aren’t tracked. The business may be profitable in aggregate while subsidizing unprofitable lines — invisible to the owner and highly visible to a sophisticated buyer.

Financial Statements Not Buyer-Ready

Three years of statements exist but are in compliance format, not management format. Notes are insufficient. Supporting schedules don’t exist. Building a data room from this state takes 8–12 weeks — compressing the window for everything else.

Operational Risk Not Quantified

Key-person dependency is present but never measured. Customer concentration exists but isn’t calculated. These are standard buyer discount items — knowing the number lets you address it; not knowing means the buyer defines it for you.

These Results Come from Preparation. Not from the Transaction.

The businesses above didn’t get better outcomes because their M&A advisors negotiated harder. They got better outcomes because their financial data supported their position before the buyer arrived. That preparation starts with the Data Diagnostic.

Learn About Succession Advisory

Market Context

Why the Preparation Gap Exists

The businesses that enter succession processes unprepared aren’t poorly run. Most are well-run businesses with genuine value. The gap is advisory: there is no natural point in a business’s lifecycle where someone says “here’s what your financial data needs to look like before you go to market.”

Accountants handle compliance. M&A advisors engage when the deal is live. Lawyers engage at the LOI stage. No one engages 12–18 months before the process starts to prepare the data.

That’s the gap AJM fills — and the reason the outcomes above are achievable. The work isn’t complex. It just needs to happen before the buyer arrives.

7,870

Alberta businesses in the $5M–$50M transition range

<50%

Have a formal succession plan in place

US$62.3B

M&A deal volume in Q1 2026 — acquirers are active

$5M–$15M

SUPPLY CHAIN SIMULATION RESULTS

Where the Data Took Us Beyond Finance

These outcomes came from applying simulation and operational analysis to supply chain and logistics data — before financial decisions were made.

Energy & Logistics — USA, Canada, Mexico

$10M+/yr

Rail & road network redesigned across three countries

Asset utilisation improved from 17% to 42%. Profitability up 50%+. Network simulation modelled before a single route changed.

3PL Provider — Canada-wide

50% freight reduction

LTL consolidation & intermodal shift validated by simulation

39,000 rows of truck data analysed. Every recommendation was simulation-proven before a single route was changed.

Oil & Gas Distributor — Inventory

$68M/yr

Unnecessary purchase orders identified in one data snapshot

$60M inventory analysed. $65M in unnecessary POs found. Ordering logic redesigned end-to-end before a dollar moved.

Powered by ARTEMIS simulation via our partnership with ALTS Canada — the same platform used in peer-reviewed supply chain research.

Typical value gap for owners who enter unprepared

The Next Outcome Is Yours.

Book a discovery call. We’ll assess where you are and what preparation looks like for your specific situation.

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