TLDR: A quality of earnings report is where mid-market valuations either hold or collapse under their own weight. It is the mechanism that converts a seller’s story about EBITDA into a number a buyer, a lender, and eventually an investment committee are willing to underwrite. The deals that close cleanly are rarely the ones with the highest headline multiple; they are the ones where the adjusted EBITDA survived scrutiny intact. Neumarz treats the quality of earnings report as the single most consequential document in a transaction, and this piece explains why.
What a Quality of Earnings Report Actually Tests
A quality of earnings engagement is often mistaken for a lighter version of an audit. The two share source material but not purpose. An audit exists to form an opinion on whether historical financial statements are fairly presented under GAAP or IFRS, and it is not intended to look at business trends or future outlook. A QoE report starts from that same historical data and asks a different question entirely: are these earnings real, and will they still be there after closing. That reframing is why even a company holding a clean audit opinion is still expected to go through a QoE process before a sale, since the audit answers a compliance question and the QoE answers an investment question.
The distinction matters commercially because acquirers do not price a business on net income. They price it on a multiple of adjusted EBITDA, and GAAP net income is, by its own framing, backward-looking, while buyers and sellers are negotiating over a forward view. A quality of earnings analysis is the bridge between the two, which is why transactions that look straightforward at the letter-of-intent stage often run into friction once the diligence team opens the general ledger. Acquisitions frequently stall or fail during diligence precisely because the review surfaces issues the headline financials never disclosed.
Inside the Adjusted EBITDA Bridge
The centrepiece of any QoE report is the reconciliation from reported EBITDA to adjusted EBITDA, and every line in that bridge has to earn its place. Analysts group adjustments into a handful of categories: non-recurring items such as one-off legal settlements or asset sales, run-rate adjustments that annualise a contract or hire signed mid-year, pro-forma adjustments for known post-transaction changes, and corrections for aggressive or inconsistent accounting policy. None of these are optional add-ons; each is meant to strip out anything that will not repeat once new ownership takes over.
What separates a defensible bridge from a negotiating tactic is evidence. Management routinely proposes add-backs framed as one-time or discretionary, but a rigorous QoE process treats every such claim as a hypothesis to test, since an adjustment without supporting invoices, contracts, or legal documentation is only an opinion. Vague categories labelled “management adjustments” are the items most likely to unravel under buyer scrutiny, and unwinding them late damages trust, and price, far more than addressing them before term sheet.
Net Working Capital: The Overlooked Half of the Analysis
EBITDA gets the attention, but the working capital analysis is where deals quietly get repriced. Because most transactions are structured around a working capital target set at close, the report has to establish what a normal, recurring level of net working capital looks like for that specific business, independent of any manoeuvring around the sale date. A technically pristine EBITDA bridge is worth little if the accompanying net working capital peg is wrong, since sellers can and do stretch payables or accelerate collections in the run-up to a sale to flatter reported cash generation.
This is also where seasonality gets tested. A business with a working capital cycle that swings meaningfully across the year needs a target that reflects a representative point in that cycle, not a snapshot taken at a convenient moment. Getting the peg wrong transfers value in one direction or the other after closing, which is exactly the kind of dispute that surfaces in escrow negotiations and earnout disagreements months after signing.
Buy-Side Versus Sell-Side: Two Different Games
Who commissions the report changes what it is built to do. A buy-side QoE exists to answer one question for the acquirer: are we paying the right price for the earnings we will actually receive after close. It is adversarial by design, hunting for negative adjustments, structural weaknesses, or trends that could justify a lower price or an earnout. A sell-side QoE, commissioned before a company goes to market, exists to do the opposite: pre-empt those same questions, present a defensible adjusted EBITDA before any buyer sees the numbers, and reduce the diligence fatigue that erodes negotiating leverage over a long process.
| Dimension | Buy-Side QoE | Sell-Side QoE |
|---|---|---|
| Commissioned by | Acquirer, typically post-LOI | Owner or sponsor, pre-market |
| Core question | Is the price justified by sustainable earnings | Can the asking price be defended before diligence begins |
| Primary output | Grounds for price reduction, earnout, or walk-away | A pre-vetted, defensible EBITDA bridge for buyers |
| Effect on process | Slower, more adversarial diligence | Shorter timeline, fewer re-trades, stronger negotiating position |
Neither version is a courtesy exercise. A well-run sell-side process is credited with fewer price re-trades between term sheet and closing, because buyers spend less time hunting for problems the seller has already found and disclosed.
Why the QoE Ends Up Deciding Price and Deal Certainty
The mechanical link between QoE findings and price is direct: because deals are priced as a multiple of adjusted EBITDA, any disallowed adjustment flows straight through to the implied valuation. A QoE finding rarely stays confined to a footnote; it resets the negotiation and often reaches beyond price into deal structure, touching the working capital peg, escrow sizing, earnout mechanics, and the representations and warranties in the purchase agreement. A buyer who signs with an unvalidated EBITDA figure risks a deal that unravels after close once actual performance fails to match the number underwritten.
This is why private equity sponsors will not skip the exercise even when management’s numbers look clean and the audit opinion is unqualified. An audit confirms the past was recorded correctly; it says nothing about whether that past is a reliable guide to what the business will earn under new ownership, new debt service, and without the departing owner’s personal relationships baked into the numbers. The QoE is the part of diligence built specifically to answer that forward-looking question, which is why it has become the de facto gatekeeper for deal certainty in mid-market M&A.
The Neumarz Angle
For a Swiss merchant bank advising owners and sponsors through mid-market transactions, the quality of earnings report is not a box-ticking formality handed to an external accounting shop and reviewed once. Neumarz works the QoE from both directions: helping sellers assemble a defensible adjusted EBITDA bridge and working capital analysis well before a process launches, and interpreting buy-side findings for clients on the acquiring end so that a disallowed add-back or a working capital dispute becomes a negotiating position rather than a reason to walk. The firms that treat QoE diligence as a strategic instrument, not an afterthought, are the ones that close at the multiple they set out to achieve. Neumarz exists to make sure clients are on that side of the table.
References
- Mercer Capital, “How Does a Quality of Earnings Report Differ From an Audit?” https://mercercapital.com/insights/blogs/family-business-director-blog/2024/how-does-a-quality-of-earnings-report-differ-from-an-audit/
- Corporate Finance Institute, “Quality of Earnings Report – Definition, Importance” https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/valuation/quality-of-earnings-report/
- Valutico, “Quality of Earnings (QoE) Adjustments: A Guide for M&A Deals” https://valutico.com/quality-of-earnings-qoe-adjustments-a-guide-for-ma-deals/
- Kahn, Litwin, Renza (KLR), “Buy-Side vs. Sell-Side Quality of Earnings: Key Differences and When to Use Each” https://kahnlitwin.com/blogs/business-blog/buy-side-vs-sell-side-quality-of-earnings-key-differences-and-when-to-use-each
- Valutico, “Working Capital Adjustment in M&A: A Definitive Guide” https://valutico.com/working-capital-adjustment-in-ma-a-definitive-guide/
