After doing a number of acquisitions before meeting Cogent, we knew that having someone with experience in the IT space to guide us through the process of buying an IT Services business would be beneficial. Cogent began with evaluating our company to understand who we were and what we were about, then began prospecting to find candidates that fit the culture, geographic and revenue model we were looking for. Their ability to deep-dive into the numbers and due diligence with autonomy made the candidates feel more comfortable and willing to open-up, allowing us to discover the opportunity – and make sure there were no skeletons — well before we closed the deals.
The Cogent team is always great to work with and very good at their respective jobs. I have participated in over eight M&A transactions in the past 20 years and have used Cogent on the last three deals over the past 6 years, including ultimately selling the managed services business we had built over a span of nearly 25 years.
As a business owner we all have a number in mind that “we think” is the value of a company, but reality is will someone actually pay for the company. Using a company like Cogent with years of experience in this space, we were able to evaluate our business reasonably while negotiating with the seller in a way where they could understand their true value based on their business model. We all understand all revenue isn’t created equally and Cogent was able to give us details like product sales, Gross Margin on product, reoccurring revenue broke out by product and services and an understanding of expenses we could quickly eliminate or phase out over time.
Once Cogent helps negotiate the deal the transaction process is simplified by their document templates. Both Buyer and Seller advisor fees are greatly reduced because of their already well-vetted transaction documentation system. Once the deal is done their upfront due diligence pays dividends on the post buy. They provide guidance, but their package included a guide for post earn outs, expense timelines, and many details that would have required months of work to find.
