How Dazur structures information, valuation and matching before a transaction is priced
An original practitioner framework for valuing private businesses when information is fragmented. The report explains how Dazur moves from raw documents to a defensible valuation range, then to value-creation work and investor matching — without inventing a market-wide multiple series.
Private-company valuation fails more often from incomplete information than from the wrong textbook formula. Owners, accountants, lawyers and investors each hold a slice of the file. The same EBITDA is restated three times. Net debt is defined differently in the teaser and the SPA.
This report sets out Dazur’s working method for 2026. It is not a survey of European deal volumes and it does not publish a fabricated multiple table. It describes the sequence we use when a company is prepared for sale, recapitalisation or a serious valuation conversation:
The HTML on this page is the full briefing. The downloadable PDF is the same research, not a hidden appendix.
Most public “valuation reports” recycle last quarter’s median EV/EBITDA. Those series can be useful when the compiler discloses the sample, the date and the adjustments. They are not useful when the sample is unpublished and the number is treated as a price.
Dazur’s daily work is different. We sit with owners and investors who need a number they can defend in a data room. This publication records the method, the assumptions we refuse to hide, and the places where a Smart Data Room changes the quality of the answer.
A typical mid-market file still travels between management, the house accountant, external counsel, a sell-side advisor and successive buyers. Each party asks for the same contracts, the same customer list and a slightly different EBITDA bridge. The delay is not mysterious. It is the cost of a fragmented information layer.
Dazur’s model is:
DATA → STRUCTURE → INTELLIGENCE → VALUATION → MATCHING → DUE DILIGENCE → DECISION
The claim is not that software deletes judgement. The claim is that judgement should not restart from a ZIP file every time a new reader arrives.
Before any EBITDA multiple is discussed, the file should answer:
If those items are missing, Dazur will say so. We do not invent a valuation to fill a blank.
Comparable company analysis prices the company against how public (or disclosed private) peers trade today. Precedent transactions prices it against what buyers paid for control in similar situations. Trading multiples and transaction multiples are not interchangeable.
A discounted cash flow is used when forecasts can be tied to evidence: backlog, retention, contracted revenue, or a history that survives quality of earnings. WACC and terminal value are disclosed as assumptions, not hidden in a black box.
Sum-of-the-parts or adjusted net assets appear when the company is a holding structure, a real-asset vehicle, or a business whose earnings are not the economic engine.
North Harbour Software is an invented B2B software company used only to show the bridge.
| Item | Illustration |
|---|---|
| ARR | €8.4m |
| Growth | 18% (last twelve months) |
| Adjusted EBITDA | €2.1m |
| Selected EV / EBITDA | 11.0x |
| Implied enterprise value | €23.1m |
| Net debt | €1.4m |
| Implied equity value | €21.7m |
A second method — a DCF with explicit churn and net revenue retention — should overlap this range or force the add-backs to be revisited. If it does not, the problem is the file, not the spreadsheet.
Dazur investigates opportunities across five pillars before a company is widely marketed:
| Pillar | Examples of questions |
|---|---|
| Commercial | Pricing power, concentration, go-to-market, retention |
| Intangible | IP ownership, data rights, brand, software architecture |
| Tangible | Capacity, capex backlog, idle assets |
| People | Key-person risk, incentives, succession |
| Financial | Working-capital release, non-core costs, capital structure |
This is not a promise of a higher bid. It is a list of work that, if left until exclusivity, often arrives too late.
Relevant counterparties usually fall into strategic buyers, private equity, family offices, institutional investors and co-investors. The match depends on thesis, ticket, geography and whether the file is ready for due diligence. A Smart Data Room does not choose the buyer. It makes the file comparable enough that the wrong buyer is filtered earlier.
Transaction articles in Dazur News apply this sequence to public facts and label the rest as hypothetical analysis. The glossary holds the definitions (enterprise value, EV/EBITDA, quality of earnings, smart data room). This report is the method that ties them together.
This is a methodology paper, not a statistical market study. It draws on International Valuation Standards approach language (market, income, cost), IFRS 13’s distinction between exit-price fair value and investment value, IPEV guidance for private capital, and Dazur’s operating sequence for Smart Data Rooms.
No third-party deal database was scraped to invent a 2026 multiple series. Illustrative numbers are labeled as invented. Where we refer to public transactions (for example in Dazur News), we use the acquirer’s own announcement and do not treat Dazur as an advisor to those deals.