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A certified valuer will listen to your situation and answer any questions you may have, at no cost.
Level 3 fair values, impairment tests and purchase price allocations, including acquisitions of salmon and wine businesses, prepared for Hobart and Tasmanian boards, finance teams and investors so the auditor can trace every input back to its source.
Indicative valuations from A$799. Certified Summary and Detailed reports from seven business days.
A financial reporting valuation backs a number in the accounts that is a judgement, not a record, and gives the auditor evidence to examine under ASA 540. Hobart entities most often need AASB 13 fair values, AASB 136 impairment tests, AASB 3 purchase price allocations and AASB 2 award values, plus AASB 141 biological assets in aquaculture and wine deals.
Some numbers in a set of accounts record what happened; others are judgements about what something is worth. The value of an unlisted stake, whether acquisition goodwill is still supported, which intangibles were really bought, what staff options cost and the fair value of fish in the pens or grapes on the vine all belong to the second group, and each rests on a valuation. ASA 540, the auditing standard for accounting estimates, requires the auditor to challenge each of these, and that challenge has become more demanding year by year.
The cost of a poor estimate goes well beyond a hard audit. An investment entity that carries a stake in a Hobart software company at an inflated fair value reports a return it has not made. Delaying a goodwill write-down by a year flatters the intervening profit, then lands all at once, sometimes on top of a lending covenant. When a Glenorchy manufacturer is bought and the whole premium goes to goodwill, with nothing assigned to its customer contracts, brand or technology, the buyer's amortisation and every later impairment test start from the wrong base.
Tasmania's economy gives these questions a local shape. Salmon farmers in southern Tasmanian waters, including off the Huon Valley, carry live fish at fair value less costs to sell under AASB 141, and vineyards in the Derwent Valley and elsewhere in the state treat grapes on the vine the same way until harvest, while the vines themselves are bearer plants under AASB 116. Tourism and hospitality groups built around the state's visitor seasons, construction and engineering businesses that grow by acquisition, health and aged care providers, family groups with unlisted holdings and not-for-profit boards reporting to the ACNC all face the same expectation that their estimates can be supported. ASIC's financial reporting surveillance has for years listed impairment and the valuation of unlisted assets among its focus areas.
Our clients for this work are CFOs, audit committees, investment entities and the auditors reviewing them, across Hobart and the rest of Tasmania, and we work with them by video call and phone. Each engagement is planned around the questions the auditor is going to ask, since that conversation is the real test of the work.
A certified valuer will listen to your situation and answer any questions you may have, at no cost.
Four standards produce most of this work. They ask different questions, measure on different bases and are audited differently, and salmon and wine businesses bring a fifth, AASB 141, into the file.
Fair value under AASB 13 is an exit price, seen from the seller's side: what an orderly sale to a market participant would bring in on the measurement date, or what it would cost to hand a liability over to one. Private company holdings almost always sit in Level 3 of the input hierarchy, where unobservable assumptions decide the result and the disclosure demands are greatest. A recent round gives a starting point, but the value still has to move with the business at every reporting date.
Testing is annual for goodwill and indefinite-life intangibles, and indicator-driven for everything else; a share price that values the company below its net assets is one such indicator. The unit's carrying amount is compared with its recoverable amount, which is the greater of what the assets are worth in continued use and what they would fetch on sale after disposal costs. Value in use projects the cash flows of the assets as they stand today, from forecasts the board has approved and generally covering no more than five years, discounted at a pre-tax rate.
After completion, the price paid is spread across the identifiable assets and liabilities at fair value, including intangibles the target never recorded: customer relationships, brands, technology, order books, licences and restraint covenants. Goodwill is whatever remains. Contingent consideration such as an earn-out comes in at fair value on the acquisition date; if it is a liability, later changes in its fair value go through profit or loss until it is paid.
An option pricing model sets the grant-date fair value of staff options and performance rights, and that amount is expensed as the awards vest. Our employee share scheme page explains how that accounting value differs from the employee's Division 83A tax value, and why the gap matters to a growing Hobart company.
Tasmanian aquaculture and wine businesses carry assets that change in value as they grow. Live fish are measured at fair value less costs to sell at each reporting date, usually on Level 3 inputs such as biomass, survival rates, expected harvest weights, forward prices and the cost of growing to harvest, with changes taken to profit or loss. Grapes on the vine follow the same rule until harvest, while the vines are bearer plants carried under AASB 116. In an acquisition or an impairment test these items have to be separated from the land, the marine farming leases and licences, the brand and the goodwill, and we build that separation from the operator's own stock and harvest records rather than from estimates of our own.
AASB 13 work starts at enterprise level. The market approach supplies multiples from listed peers and comparable transactions, and where the investee's stage and information support it, the income approach adds a discounted cash flow. We then allocate the enterprise value to each class of security using a waterfall, an option pricing model or a backsolve to the latest round. If the holder bought in recently, we calibrate the model to that entry price and then adjust only for genuine changes since, in trading, peer multiples or milestones. Loans and notes held are priced on yield, comparing their terms with what the market currently demands for similar risk, with enterprise value cover as a check, and convertible notes are valued including the conversion right, which on the issuer's side may need separate accounting as an equity component or an embedded derivative.
Impairment work under AASB 136 begins with structure, not numbers. How the cash-generating units are drawn and where goodwill is allocated decide whether a struggling division can shelter behind a profitable one, and that is the first thing an auditor checks. The value in use model then keeps to the standard: cash flows for the assets in their present state, with growth capital and uncommitted restructuring left out, a terminal growth rate with long-run support, and a pre-tax discount rate found by iteration from a market-based post-tax cost of capital. For a Tasmanian tourism or hospitality group, we test the forecast against the full seasonal cycle, so a strong summer and a busy winter festival period are not annualised into a level the business cannot hold. Where value in use lands near the carrying amount, we also estimate fair value less costs of disposal, because the standard takes whichever of the two is greater, and relying on one alone can create a write-down that should never have been booked.
For a purchase price allocation under AASB 3, each intangible gets the method that fits it. Customer relationships are usually valued by multi-period excess earnings, brands and technology by relief from royalty, restraint covenants by comparing results with and without them, and the assembled workforce at replacement cost as a contributory asset. In a salmon or wine acquisition, the biological assets, bearer plants and land are measured first under their own standards so nothing is counted twice. We then check that the returns implied for the individual assets average back to the return on the deal as a whole, because the auditor will run the same check. That work carries forward into the first impairment test and any tax cost setting, and the sensitivity analysis is prepared in the shape the disclosure notes need.
Each of these can turn an ordinary year-end into a modified audit opinion, a restated comparative or a letter from ASIC.
Almost every financial reporting valuation is certified, because its first reader is the auditor and its second may be ASIC. The Indicative report, which is for internal decision-making, is for the stage before that: a board testing whether a write-down is likely, or how a proposed acquisition would land on the balance sheet, before anything is decided.
The layout mirrors the order an auditor works in. It opens with the accounting question, the unit of account and the measurement date, then sets out the information used, the method and the reason for it, each input with its source and date, the calculation, the sensitivities and a draft of the disclosure note. Judgements are explained in plain English where they are made, so an audit reviewer can follow the reasoning without reconstructing the model.
A certified valuer signs the report, answers the auditor's questions directly by video call or phone, walks the audit committee through the sensitivities and defends the conclusion if it is challenged. If a reported value later becomes part of a commercial dispute in the Supreme Court of Tasmania, the same valuer can give expert evidence under Part 19 of the Supreme Court Rules 2000. We schedule the work around your close and bring in the finance team and auditor at the start, because a valuation that turns up after the accounts are signed can only argue a position, not inform it.
If the auditor rejects one key assumption, how far does the conclusion move, and does anyone already know the answer? A valuation that needs days to find out has not been stress-tested.
Talk your situation through with a certified valuer before you commit to anything, at no cost.