A private equity house is using Intanify to size up bolt-on acquisitions before it approaches them. Advisers to a renewable power developer used it ahead of a sale, to see what anyone looking from the outside could find. An outside-in review of a UK software business was run the same way.
Each picture came from public information alone, before anyone opened a data room.
The power developer showed 166 intangible assets, from two decades of project development know-how to long-term contracts with national utilities. It also showed a brand well known across its markets, with no registered trade mark the advisers could find. The software business showed 106 intangible assets and 129 relationships between them.
None of that sits on a balance sheet, yet much of it shapes what a buyer will pay.
Around 92% of a company's value is now intangible – know-how, software, data, contracts, relationships and brand. In most deals, that is most of what changes hands.
Yet very little of it is ever written down. A standard IP schedule records the registered part and assumes the rest.
Until recently, identifying the rest before a deal was not practical. It meant months of interviews and document review that no deal timetable or budget would absorb.
AI has changed that. Intangible assets can now be identified from a company's documents, or from public information alone, with lawyers validating the output.
The consequence is simple. Whichever side does this first holds the advantage. The other side negotiates against someone else's picture.
This is the first of three pieces following intangible assets through the life of a deal. This one covers the pre-deal stage, where seller and buyer do the same exercise for opposite reasons.
Most sellers don't know everything they own. One advanced manufacturer believed it held six intangible assets. Using Intanify, it found 131, including 23 items of know-how, 23 software solutions and 16 copyright works that had never been recorded.
That gap matters because buyers pay for what they can see and rely on. An equity story that links each revenue line to the know-how, code, data and contracts behind it gives a buyer more to model: returns, synergies and how defensible the business is. That gives grounds for a stronger bid.
It also sharpens competition. When several bidders can each see the same scarce assets clearly, more of the synergy value moves to the seller.
Going first lets the seller set the narrative. Buyers then work from the seller's account of the asset base, and it shapes the questions they ask.
And it buys time. Looking from the outside first – at what any well-advised buyer could find – turns an unregistered brand from a buyer's negotiating point into a fix made months earlier.
A full picture also helps with any pre-sale reorganisation, so only the right assets go into the sale.
This reaches well beyond technology companies. In an infrastructure business the obvious value is physical, but what separates one operator from another is know-how, contracts, relationships and track record.
A research and insight business preparing for sale found substantial unidentified intangible value – its content, its specialist relationships and the platform behind them – and that almost none of it had been recorded. Its IP schedule would have listed a handful of registered rights. A buyer would be paying for something else.
Whatever a seller leaves unseen is value no buyer gets the chance to pay for.
The buyer's case runs the other way. The aim is to find where the value sits, and what the price should reflect, before the seller's story frames the conversation.
An outside-in view can be built discreetly, before any approach. The target need not know, and the cost is low. Websites, product material, filings, registries, press and conference material are enough for a first-draft asset register.
That is why the private equity house uses it on bolt-ons: it can compare candidates on what actually drives their value before deciding which to approach. Beyond choosing targets, it gives a buyer an edge at several points:
The negotiating points can be large. One fast-growing company had to pay its own founder for the trade marks it needed for a rebrand. The transaction was later unwound and contributed to a withdrawn IPO.
A buyer who spots that kind of gap early has a point to negotiate. One who spots it late has a problem.
Arriving at the data room with its own view, the buyer knows where the seller's account is thin before the first management presentation.
Seller and buyer want opposite things from the same information. One wants to show the full value; the other wants to find what the price should reflect. Either way, the side with the fuller picture negotiates from strength.
What used to take months, and sat outside any deal budget, can now be done in days or weeks using software such as Intanify, with lawyers validating the results. That puts it within reach of both sides, on every deal.
The only open question is who does it first. Few buyers or sellers do it yet, so the advantage is there for the taking. It won't stay that way for long.
In Part 2, we follow the deal into the data room, where the question shifts from what is there to what can be relied on.