Thanks for the tag ^redacted‌ A lot of good comments here. A few thoughts, staying high level. Inflated COGS on its own isn’t automatically fatal — but it does shift the burden of proof. The key question is whether the adjustments reflect a temporary, explainable distortion or a structural reality that’s being smoothed over for valuation. A few things I’d want clarity on: why COGS were inflated (one-off labor, materials, subs, accounting choices?) whether the adjusted margins are already showing up in operations or remain forward-looking how dependent the valuation is on contracts that haven’t started yet In HVAC specifically, we’ve seen commercial contracts look great on paper but hide complexity in staffing, service levels, and margin volatility once you’re operating. One other lens that’s been helpful is triangulating trust signals outside the financials — how customers talk about billing, service consistency, and contract terms. In service-heavy businesses, margin pressure often shows up there before it shows up cleanly in the numbers. Not saying this is a no — just that I’d be careful about paying today for margin improvement that depends on both normalization and future execution.

So, they inflated COGS for tax purposes, and now are trying to tell you that owner = worker wages which were on COGS should be added back? How is that even possible, if the owner is the COGS, that means he is the work, which also means that you can't really add much of it back to SDE.