Only 15.9% of filed deal prices are on an enterprise-value basis

You can find precedent deals, and the bank on each side, in 8-K exhibits on EDGAR for free. But the press release prices the deal however the company chooses. Of the headline deal prices whose dollar figure we matched word for word to the filing text, 15.9% are classified on an enterprise-value basis, so 84.1% aren't.

Purchase price, transaction value and aggregate consideration each describe something different. A comps table built from filings needs a basis check on every row. A price on any other basis needs its exhibit read before it shares a column with EV.

Macabacus (opens in a new tab) covers the method, from deal selection to defining EV as equity value plus net debt, and warns that vendor deal data "must be verified." In a r/FinancialCareers thread (opens in a new tab), someone building comps for a UK take-private is pulling precedents from LSE Rule 2.7 announcements one at a time, and 8-K exhibits take the same manual reading.

Five bases for a filed price

We took every deal value in the register whose dollar figure we could match word for word to the filing text, from October 2020 to this month, and grouped them by the basis each price is classified on.

The remaining 0.5% carry no basis label.

Purchase price is the most common basis, about a third of the total. It is the amount paid to the seller for a business or a subsidiary. In the Auction Holdings deal below, the release adds "debt-free, cash-free," which moves the price close to EV.

In the Adirondack deal below, the transaction value is an implied value at the acquirer's share price on one day. Aggregate consideration is the total of everything paid, cash and stock and sometimes assumed debt. Equity value is the price for the shares, before net debt.

Enterprise-value deals run largest

The EV row looks nothing like the others. Its median is $1.8B, about five and a half times the $330M median for purchase price. Nearly two thirds of EV-basis values are $1B or more, and only 1.9% are under $100M.

• Aggregate consideration23.9%$1B or more: 24.1%
• Purchase price20.6%$1B or more: 21.7%
• Transaction value12.4%$1B or more: 45.7%
• Equity value7.1%$1B or more: 47.0%
• Enterprise value1.9%$1B or more: 65.1%

So a precedent set limited to EV-basis prices skews toward large deals. The small deals that an analyst at a lower-middle-market fund actually wants are mostly on a purchase-price or aggregate-consideration basis: about 72% of the matched values under $100M are on one of those two. Each one needs its exhibit read before it goes in an EV column. This pattern describes deals disclosed in 8-K exhibits, which are filed by SEC registrants.

A worked set: sub-$100M filed deals on different bases

From filed deals under $100M, we picked deals on several bases and read the exhibit behind it. Each needs a different check.

The sell-side advisers were Canaccord Genuity for Auction Holdings, Keefe, Bruyette & Woods for Adirondack, H.C. Wainwright for Agile and Macquarie Capital for Galaxy Gaming.

Auction Holdings. Liquidity Services' press release exhibit (opens in a new tab) says it bought the business "for a base purchase price of $80 million in cash, on a debt-free, cash-free basis, subject to customary adjustments." Debt-free, cash-free means the buyer isn't taking on net debt, so the $80M is close to EV before working-capital adjustments. It can go in the EV column with a footnote.

Adirondack Bancorp. Arrow Financial's announcement (opens in a new tab) prices the deal at 1.8610 Arrow shares plus $18.72 in cash per Adirondack share. It then says that "Based on the closing stock price of AROW common stock of $34.43 as of February 25, 2026, the per share implied consideration value is $82.79 and the aggregate implied transaction value is approximately $89.1 million." That is an equity price at one day's share price, and it moves with Arrow's stock until close. Bank deals in general are compared on price to tangible book rather than EV multiples, so a bank target like this one belongs in a bank-specific table.

Agile Therapeutics. This is the rare small deal on an EV basis. The exhibit (opens in a new tab) says the buyer "will acquire Agile for $1.52 per share in cash net of assumed liabilities and estimated transaction costs for an approximate total enterprise value of $45 million." The company defines its own EV here, net of transaction costs, and the same release describes a line of credit of up to $8,000,000, called the Bridge Loan, as part of the merger consideration. Read the definition before you trust the label.

Galaxy Gaming. The release (opens in a new tab) states "a total equity value of approximately $85 million, and approximately $124 million including net debt." It also gives fiscal 2024 guidance of "$12.0 - $13.0 million in Adjusted EBITDA." The EV/EBITDA multiple comes from the $124M, not the $85M. And the deal sits in the table's smallest size band on equity value but not on EV, so the conversion changes which size band it lands in.

Reading the exhibit to put each price on one basis

For each row in a precedent table built from filings, work through the same list.

1. Copy the exact phrase the filing uses for the price, and keep it in its own column. "Purchase price" and "enterprise value" shouldn't share a column header until you've checked the basis.
2. Look for the words that change the basis: "debt-free, cash-free," "including net debt," "net of assumed liabilities," "implied," "up to an additional." They usually sit in the same sentence as the number.
3. If the exhibit gives net debt, add it to an equity value to get EV. If it doesn't, the 10-Q or 10-K of a public target, or the merger proxy, usually has the balance sheet. For a private target bought by a public company, the next 10-Q often allocates the purchase price.
4. Note the date of any share price used to value stock consideration, and whether earnouts are in or out. For NHanced Semiconductors, Quantum Computing Inc.'s release (opens in a new tab) gives "a combination of cash and QCi stock valued at $73.1 million, subject to customary adjustments, and up to an additional $72.0 million if certain performance targets are achieved." The earnout nearly doubles the headline if it pays out in full. Pick one convention (upfront only, or upfront plus a probability-weighted earnout), state it in the table and use it on every row.

Then the multiples line up. Without that step, a table that mixes a $1.8B-median EV column with a $330M-median purchase-price column is comparing different things.

The Corridome deal finder searches filed deals by stated value. Each deal page shows the price basis and the advisers on each side, with the exhibit linked, so you start each row with the basis and the exhibit link in hand.