Value Lens scores each deal against one fixed picture: the company as it is today, and the $100M exit it's aiming for. This page lists every number that picture is built from: which figures come straight from the plan, which are judgment calls we set and can tune, and the reasoning and source behind each one.
Not a valuation or financial advice. The company figures come from our AOP. The multiples and curves are directional market context, to be ratified by us, the board, and our advisors. The real value is in the differences between deals. Those hold up far better than the precision of any single number.
| Value | Note | |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $65.19M | AOP total. The $100M figure used elsewhere is the exit target, not today's number. |
| 2026 planned EBITDA | ~$5.0M (~7.7%) | Planned, and acknowledged uncertain. |
| Vertical mix (revenue) | Branded 49.3% · PL 39.0% · Co-man 11.7% | Branded = Miss Jones + SBS + Good Golly + Miss Jones Club; PL = Great Value + BetterGoods + Bakers Corner + Favorite Day; Co-man = contract. |
| Largest customer | Walmart 51.3% | ~70% of the Walmart line is private label (Great Value + BetterGoods). |
Customer roster (AOP $M), which drives the concentration model:
| Customer | $M | % of today |
|---|---|---|
| Walmart | 33.46 | 51.3% |
| UNFI (distributor) | 10.08 | 15.5% |
| Co-Man | 7.63 | 11.7% |
| KeHE (distributor) | 5.62 | 8.6% |
| Amazon | 1.69 | 2.6% |
| Costco | 1.52 | 2.3% |
| Target | 1.46 | 2.2% |
| Dollar Tree | 0.96 | 1.5% |
| Kroger | 0.80 | 1.2% |
| Aldi | 0.65 | 1.0% |
| Other small accounts | 1.32 | 2.0% |
| Total | 65.19 | 100% |
| Lever | Value | Tag |
|---|---|---|
| Target revenue | $100M | plan |
| Target EBITDA margin | 15% | fixed |
| Target EBITDA | $15M | fixed a real stretch from ~$5M today |
| Target mix (default) | same as today (49.3 / 39.0 / 11.7) | dial defaulted, not yet set |
Worth flagging: $5M → $15M EBITDA in roughly two years is the single most aggressive assumption in the model, and it's the denominator the whole exit value scales on, so it deserves the board's direct attention. The exit frame is fixed in this version so every deal scores on the same ruler; making it a live dial to pressure-test (say $10–12M) is planned for a later version.
What a buyer pays for a dollar of EBITDA depends on which book it sits in. These three anchors drive every multiple result and the mix-shift effect, so they're the most important dials to vet for live use.
| Vertical | Anchor | Grounding (linked) |
|---|---|---|
| Branded | 9.0x | Manufacturing/distribution food trades ~6–10x; high-growth branded CPG 12–15x+ (True North M&A). A solid brand in a mature baking category sits upper-middle, not at the top. |
| Private label | 6.5x | PL trades at a discount to branded, but well-certified, balanced-customer plants reach the upper half of the band (Auxo, PL & Co-Man). 6.5x reflects switchable, customer-held PL. |
| Co-man | 4.5x | Contract manufacturing prices "like industrials, not brands" (Auxo, CPG methods). 4.5x reflects traditional toll work with concentration. |
At our actual mix, these blend to ~7.50x (49.3%×9.0 + 39.0%×6.5 + 11.7%×4.5): the book's baseline multiple before any concentration discount. For broader context, mid-market food & beverage / CPG multiples have compressed in recent years but remain in this range (VRC; Auxo F&B multiples).
The more the book leans on a single customer, the lower the multiple a buyer pays for the whole book: that's revenue-at-risk. This curve sets how many turns of discount come off at each level of largest-customer share at the exit. It's piecewise-linear and tunable in the Constitution panel.
| Largest-customer share | 15% | 25% | 30% | 40% | 50% | 60% | 70% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Discount (turns) | 0.0 | 0.5 | 0.9 | 1.3 | 1.7 | 2.0 | 2.4 |
Why this shape: the flag starts around 10–15% (Website Closers); roughly 0.5–1.0 turns by 20–25% and 1–2+ turns at 40–50% (Praxis Rock); about a one-turn haircut, with earnouts layered on in practice (Nuvera); concentrated EBITDA is simply capitalized at a lower multiple (Clearly Acquired; Sofer Advisors). At today's 51% top-customer share, the curve reads about 1.7 turns of suppression.
Some problems can't be priced away. Past a certain line, a deal simply isn't sellable at the target on those terms. These three gates mark a deal as not sellable at target regardless of the value it would otherwise add.
| Gate | Default | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Concentration cliff | largest customer > 40% of exit book | Above roughly 30–40%, a chunk of buyers decline to bid at all (FOCUS). The curve above handles routine concentration as a discount; this is the salability backstop: a thin-auction problem, not a haircut. |
| EBITDA-crater floor | fully-loaded margin < 5% | You can't multiple-lift your way out of lost earnings. |
| Maturity-vs-exit | steady state must arrive by month 18 | 24-month horizon minus a 6-month buffer; a buyer won't underwrite a deal still mid-ramp at the exit. |
A deal's contribution margin isn't its real EBITDA margin: it has to carry the overhead it pulls in. The bridge below estimates that overhead from the deal's complexity and capacity load:
overhead% = 25% base × complexity × capacity
complexity: in-core 0.85 · moderate 1.0 · high 1.25
capacity: low 0.90 · medium 1.0 · high 1.15
The accretive-vs-dilutive line sits at 12% fully-loaded EBITDA: packaged-food mid-market runs about 10–15%. Complexity and capacity load the overhead here, so they cost the deal earnings and margin; the multiple itself is moved only by mix and concentration. The base and factors are tuned so a moderate / medium-capacity / 40%-CM deal lands near the 15% target margin.
growth = rev / 15 · margin = margin / 20 · multiple = 0.5 + turn-effect / 0.8. These are display scales for the deal-shape radar only: they shape the picture, not the verdict.
Durability (everyday-embedded, recurring-seasonal, or one-shot/LTO) captures the quality of the revenue, separate from which vertical it sits in. It feeds the math two ways. The defaults below are grounded in recurring-revenue and concentration research; they're dials we own, deliberately asymmetric, and bounded so durability is a notch, not a reclassification.
Effect A: adjustment to the deal's own earnings (turns):
| Everyday | Recurring | One-shot |
|---|---|---|
| +0.4x | 0.0x (neutral) | −0.5x |
A dollar of sticky everyday revenue is worth more because a buyer doesn't have to re-earn it; a one-shot or LTO is "project" revenue a buyer marks down. The one-shot penalty is larger than the everyday bonus because buyers cut harder for non-recurring revenue than they pay up for stickiness.
Effect B: softener on the concentration the deal adds (multiplier):
| Everyday | Recurring | One-shot |
|---|---|---|
| ×0.85 | ×0.95 | ×1.00 |
Durable revenue lowers the likelihood the concentrated customer leaves, so a buyer prices the added concentration a touch softer, but only partially, never to zero.
Hard guardrails (not dials): the softener applies only to concentration a deal adds (de-concentrating moves get full credit) and durability never relaxes the 40% salability gate, which reads the raw exit share. At the cliff, buyers thin out regardless of how good the contract looks.
| Path | Exit EV | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Today | ~$29M | $5M EBITDA at the 7.50x blend, less the ~1.7-turn concentration drag at 51%. |
| Baseline / target | ~$97M | $15M EBITDA, with diversified growth keeping the top customer near ~33%, about a 1.0-turn drag. |
| Concentrated | ~$87M | If the top customer rides up to 51% of the bigger book. |
| Clean ceiling | ~$112M | The multiple with no concentration drag at all (unreachable at this mix). |
The ~$10M gap between the baseline ($97M) and the concentrated path ($87M) is the de-concentration prize, and it sits in the multiple, not in revenue. That's the whole reason to screen deals by exit value rather than top line.
Every figure here is a starting point for our own validation. The tool's value is in the deltas between deals, which are far more robust than any single dial's precision.