Intangible assets: how to compute an EBITDA ratio in order to value non-listed companies ?[Actifs immatériels : comment calculer un ratio d’EBITDA pour valoriser les entreprises non cotées ?]

The question of company valuation is a very rich field, but one that has long been dominated by an allegiance to neo-liberal finance, and which, since the economy has become immaterial, is struggling to explain the amounts involved in mergers and acquisitions. Economists have understood the importance of intangibles in wealth creation, but managers, more attached to accounting principles, have only recently taken these dimensions into account. The first methods, however useful they may have been, are incomplete and unclear. They also need to be revisited to take account of societal changes over the last ten years. Most valuation proposals are made for listed companies, for which EBITDA multiples are readily available. These are not easily transposable to unlisted companies, where access to data is often limited. And even if data were accessible, how should it be used to estimate an EBITDA multiple? In order to do so, we propose a new, more open method, which takes into account the need to verify alignment between strategy, profitability and sustainability, which gives full importance to questions of risk and agility, and which proposes an innovative way of estimating an EBITDA multiple based on answers to non-financial questions.