What an amazing weekend for the weather. Everybody I have spoken to today seems to be a lot more upbeat than a couple of weeks ago when it was cold, wet and windy.

The coming of the warmer weather also has a positive effect on the business sales market. The September quarter is generally regarded as the best time to market a business for sale and I believe the change of seasons has something to do with it. Buyers seem a lot more positive this time of year and response levels to advertising increases markedly with the coming of the sun.

A lot of potential business buyers have also had a midyear holiday by this time and coming back to ‘status quo’ of current employment, often has a crystallising effect and adds fuel to the ‘time for a change’ mentality.

Also, the end of September gives the perfect opportunity to any purchaser to look at the target businesses performance over the first 6 months of the financial year, and in a lot of cases the best part of the year is to come with the Christmas and summer seasons.

If as a business owner you have had a mid-winter break, or especially if as a business owner you can’t take the time for a business break, now could be the time to look at exiting your business. As I have said in previous posts, if your business is still doing well, then you will still get a good price because there are a significant number of motivated purchasers looking for opportunities despite what you might read in the media.

The business I mentioned in last week’s blog went unconditional today. It was a quality business with good current performance and excellent future prospects and for a business that was around $1.5m in value it achieved a 30% capitalisation rate on 3 year average EBITDA. This is not to dissimilar to even the boom times.

So if you are a business owner who is thinking of selling this is the time of the year to look at your options. The sun will hopefully be shining, Tony Alexander (Chief Economist at BNZ) business confidence survey shows 56% of respondents positive, up from 15% in July, supply & demand curve in your favour with significantly more buyers than sellers. Our advice is as always that if exiting your business is on your mind then you should sell.

And if you are a buyer, we hope that owners of quality businesses heed our advice and hit the market now, so we will continue to have businesses available for you to view.

Have a great week everybody, I will be taking a week off next week and heading to sunny Queensland for 10 days of golf and Pina Coladas.