I can tell you lenders are looking at it based on a market perspective. I also recommend to clients to request the 2018 and 2019 tax returns and/or financial statements if the business was substantially impacted by the pandemic and use that to help streamline what normalized operations look like. Although I would never advise anyone to rely on statements that old for buying, it can help put into perspective the impact of the pandemic.

Thanks Brad. Two perspectives trying to utilise this for are:

1) preliminary screen of earnings, SDE and Revenue/EBITDA ratios for how robust the business is and

2) Potential sales price.

On first point, the backing out of grants/non recurring income and broader financial review solves this issue. On the second point though, if 2023/2024 are inflated then price/expectation based on a multiplier of average EBITDA gets skewed. Is resolution, the review/analysis of quality of earnings and potential to retain or grow the revenues/margin going forward?