The Information Premium: How Data Clarity Buys You Multiple Turns on Exit
An operator’s playbook for turning predictive insights into decisions that move margin.
By Thomas T. Thomas, Co-Founder & CEO, Teragonia
We spend the entire hold period fighting for every basis point of EBITDA. We overhaul management teams, optimize supply chains, and rationalize SKU portfolios to architect a more valuable asset.
Yet when we arrive at the exit, we often degrade that value with the way we present it.
We hand over static, flattened databooks. We ask buyers to trust manual adjustments. And when the inevitable question comes: “Can you roll this forward to include last month?”, we scramble for three days to reconcile spreadsheets. This creates a vacuum of silence that buyers instinctively fill with doubt.
In a market where the cost of capital is high and diligence is already intrinsically filled with challenge, opacity is simply a discount. Clarity is a premium.
We call this the Information Premium. In our team’s experience, which includes advisory on more than $500B in M&A transactions, the information premium for a mid-market asset with a strong story can be worth between 0.5x and 1.0x EBITDA.
But capturing that premium requires abandoning the static databook playbook in favor of a live, defensible data foundation.
The traditional exit preparation process is broken. It relies on a “black box” approach where bankers and consultants ingest raw data, manipulate it offline, and produce a polished PDF narrative.
The problem usually isn’t the narrative. It’s the lack of lineage.
When a buyer’s Quality of Earnings (QoE) team digs in, they look for risk. Every manual adjustment that cannot be instantly traced back to the source transaction is a risk flag. Every delay in updating the model for the latest fiscal period is a signal of operational immaturity.
Buyers price this risk aggressively. They use “diligence friction” to modify the deal or widen structural protections.
To defend your multiple, you must remove the friction. You have to move from “Trust Us” to “Here is the Evidence.”
To capture the Information Premium, we must treat the exit not as a static report but as a live operation. Approaching exit prep in this way shifts the paradigm in three ways that directly impact valuation confidence.
“To capture the Information Premium, we must treat the exit not as a static report but as a live operation.”
The most dangerous moment in a deal is the “roll-forward.” This request to update the data room with the most recent month’s performance usually triggers a fire drill. It freezes the finance team and delays deal momentum.
By deploying a Live Connected Exit Data Foundation, you can eliminate the fire drill. By connects directly to source systems (ERP, CRM, HRIS), roll-forward happens automatically.
When a buyer asks for the latest data, you then don’t need say “Give us a week.” You can simply say “It’s already there.” That speed signals control and certainty.
Proforma adjustments are the battleground of valuation. You argue that a cost is one-time. The buyer argues it’s recurring.
You cannot win this argument with a spreadsheet cell that contains a hard-coded number. You win it with lineage.
By using a dynamic proforma engine, every adjustment links to the underlying transactional reality. If you claim a $2M adjustment for a plant closure, the buyer can click through to the specific ledger entries, invoices, and severance payments that comprise that number.
This creates a defensible proforma, which shifts the negotiation posture from “Is this number real?” to “We agree on the facts.” When the baseline is indisputable, buyer confidence rises.
Financials only tell half the story. The rest is buried in unstructured data. This includes contracts, customer emails, support tickets, and vendor agreements.
Historically, this data was ignored during exits because it was too hard to structure. But now with AI (including Teragonia’s) we can virtually effortlessly extract value from these unstructured sources to further strengthen the narrative.
Imagine quantitatively proving customer sentiment trends by analyzing thousands of support tickets. Or instantly surfacing change-of-control clauses across five years of vendor contracts. This depth of information transparency removes the “unknown unknowns” that cause buyers to hedge their offers.
“Financials only tell half the story. The rest is buried in unstructured data. This includes contracts, customer emails, support tickets, and vendor agreements.”
PE partners often express hesitation about introducing new technology during a sale process. They worry it will slow them down.
The reality is the opposite. The manual process is what slows you down.
In 2026 a live foundation as I’ve described it can be deployed in as little as 48 hours. It doesn’t disrupt the banker or the management team. It empowers them. It gives the deal team a live, connected, command center view of the databook. You curate exactly what the buyer sees while maintaining total fidelity in the backend.
We are in a market where buyers have every reason to say “no” and every reason to pay less.
If you bring a high-quality asset to market with low-quality, static data, you are simply voluntarily surrendering value. And by extension you’re giving the buyer carte blanche to price in a risk discount for opacity.
By orchestrating the exit with a live, transparent, and AI-enabled foundation, you flip the equation. You provide the clarity buyers crave while simultaneously accelerating the timeline. You capture the information premium that your asset deserves and that you’d otherwise be leaving on the table.
The exit is the final scorecard of your value creation plan. Don’t let the static, traditional process of the pre-AI era decide the score.
A proven business builder, innovator and M&A advisor with significant global experience, and adept in quantitative techniques and technology, Thomas brings forth a unique set of perspectives and capabilities to boost the systemic efficiency of fast-growing enterprises. Thomas has been a trusted advisor throughout his professional services career to several financial sponsors, sovereign wealth funds and Fortune 100 corporations, throughout the M&A life cycle from deal sourcing, deal execution, post-close value creation, to exit.
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Scott Briggs
BS International Business | American University of Paris
BS Computer Science | American University of Paris
Seasoned DevOps and infrastructure engineer with expertise in AWS, Kubernetes, and Terraform; led cloud migrations and scalable infrastructure projects at Sfara, FanDuel, and Kickstarter.
With over 15 years of experience in small and medium-sized startups, Scott is a seasoned expert in designing, optimizing, and maintaining robust, scalable, and secure infrastructure. He specializes in automation and embedding security from the ground up, consistently delivering reliable systems tailored to meet dynamic business requirements.
Prior to joining Teragonia, Scott made a significant impact at Sfara, where he built the company’s entire infrastructure from scratch. He engineered systems capable of supporting hundreds of thousands of users with seamless scalability, implemented automated development pipelines, and introduced observability tools to monitor and manage resources effectively. Additionally, Scott led the infrastructure team in achieving ISO27001 security certification, ensuring security was integrated into every aspect of the system and transforming it into a critical asset for business-to-business operations.
Beyond his technical expertise, Scott has a proven track record of managing and mentoring high-performing teams. As a Senior DevOps Engineer at FanDuel, he gained invaluable experience in scaling infrastructure and optimizing resources to support millions of daily users, aligning technological capabilities with organizational goals.
Jack Amedio
Master’s in Human Resources | University of Illinois
Bachelor’s in Management | Loyola University
Former Financial and Operations Manager at Houlihan Lokey, Golin Harris, and MSL Group.
Jack is a highly driven, cross functional professional with extensive experience in operations and administration.
Prior to joining Teragonia, Jack held financial and facilities management roles for Houlihan Lokey, MSL Group/Publicis, and Golin Harris in which managed and created processes and trainings for multiple functional areas ensuring operational and administrative procedures were well planned, efficient, cost-effective, and aligned with business objectives while ensuring initiatives, internal events as well as client events propelled employee and client engagement.
Jack holds undergraduate degrees from University of Illinois and Loyola University Chicago and has completed graduate certificates in Business Administration, Strategic Human Resources, and Operations at Cornell, CUNY-Buffalo, and University of Illinois and is in the process of completing a Master’s in Human Resources at Loyola University Chicago’s Quinlan School of Business.
Mason Taylor
MS Analytics | Georgia Institute of Technology
BS Management Information Systems | Oklahoma State University
Former analytics engineer at Cyderes and ConocoPhillips with a Master’s in Analytics from Georgia Institute of Technology and a Bachelor’s in Management Information Systems from Oklahoma State University
Mason is an Analytics Engineer with deep experience in data analytics, business intelligence, machine learning, and cybersecurity. He brings a proven track record of leading analytics engagements spanning architecture, insights, visualizations, and delivery.
Before joining Teragonia, Mason was a Senior Analytics Engineer at Cybersecurity MSSP CYDERES where he built a scalable, standardized, and secure analytics architecture for over 300 clients across many industries and consulted with them to deliver insights through bespoke data driven solutions. In addition, he managed the data delivery of the insight platform leveraged by the Security Operations Center to respond to incidents in a timely and effective manner.
Prior to joining CYDERES, Mason worked in ConocoPhillips’ Analytics and Innovation Center of Excellence holding varied roles within the Data Analytics organization from Data Engineering, to Business Intelligence, and Data Science. He delivered robust data solutions in all operating units for various functions including Engineering and Production, Finance, IT, and more. Including projects to standardize cost and production data across operating units.
Mason started his career at The Williams Companies in cybersecurity and transitioned to cybersecurity at ConocoPhillips where he found his passion for Data Analytics through SIEM management, detection engineering, and threat intelligence.
Grace Sun
Bachelor’s in Finance & Accounting | Georgetown University
Former analytics engineer at Houlihan Lokey and financial analytics at JP Morgan Chase with a Bachelor’s in Finance & Accounting at Georgetown University
Grace is a seasoned analytics engineer with specialized expertise in crafting and implementing analytics solutions that drive agile, informed executive decisions in M&A and value creation for private equity-backed companies.
Before joining Teragonia, Grace was a part of the data science and business analytics team at Houlihan Lokey. She has excelled in harmonizing, enriching, and analyzing data from diverse sources, providing key insights that enabled private equity investors and portfolio company executives to make rapid, data-driven decisions across the investment lifecycle. She has developed novel analytics solutions, including deal sourcing and evaluation tools for platform investments that employ a buy-and-build or de novo growth strategy, as well as post-close value creation and KPI reporting tools for operators and management teams.
Grace has also worked at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in the Global Finance and Business Management rotational program, where she built analytics solutions to evaluate banker attrition and KPI reporting within the Global Private Bank.