Private Equity Insights
Transforming Lower Middle-
Benchmarking Challenges in the Market
Finding relevant private company comps for valuing an ESOP is challenging, especially in the lower middle market. Traditional data sources are pricey, limited, or lack key valuation metrics, and information from dealmaking peers is often insufficient to extrapolate to a broader benchmark.
Accurate ESOP valuations require robust data and clean, fair-market comps—not inflated multiples from strategic acquisitions where buyers pay premiums for synergies.
Enter GF DATA: A Better Approach
Founded by two lower middle-market investment bankers in 2006
and now owned by ACG, GF Data removes the emotion and hyperbole
from deal negotiations and provides a clear benchmark for valuing and structuring deals – one that comes directly from the marketplace.
How GF Data Works
We collect transaction data quarterly directly from more than 330 participating private equity groups sponsoring lower middle-market deals in the North America, which power our outputs.
Rather than providing individual company comps, GF Data anonymizes and aggregates the collected data into views based on average and median to allow users to find market rates across multiple transactions.
Our interactive aggregate comp database and quarterly reports provide a clear line to precedent private company transactions that enable subscribers to:
- Benchmark private companies with up to $500 million of enterprise value
- Educate and manage seller expectations of the market
- Identify and understand trends in the middle market
- Map out debt structures and pricing utilized in sponsor-backed middle-market transactions
- Create more impactful client pitch decks or marketing materials using our data
Comprehensive Deal Data
GF Data collects more than 30 data points on each of our contributor’s deals—including valuation data points, financial performance indicators, debt structure and pricing, and key deal terms.
Subscribers can access the aggregate data through our online database and search based on industry drilldown and NAICS code.
Data can be viewed through company enterprise value size tiers and EBITDA range, with outputs for mean, median and top quartile/bottom quartile, and filtering by type of buyer, type of seller and portfolio company versus add-on, to name just a few.
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