The key is to focus on the right assets and the buyers who want them.

Over the years, our firm has done a good number of sales for companies losing money – or not making much.  It's a different buyer market – and a tougher one to locate and identify – but it is out there, if you're creative and industrious enough to find it. 

Several years ago, we sold a metal stamping company, which had been playing with the notion of sale and talking with us about it for over 5 years.  During those years the company had continued to grow top line, but their industry was increasingly plagued by very intense international competition, and the jobs they took, to hold up top line, had decreased consistently in profit margins. 

They finally hired our firm to sell them.  But unfortunately, about a month after we were hired, they were thrown into involuntary bankruptcy.  Luckily, we were able to get appointed by the federal bankruptcy judge, to continue representing them in sale.  We got the job done, and we achieved enough on sale to pay off all banks, pay off all trade creditors, and pay some to shareholders.  However, the total was almost $30 million less than what our original estimate had been years earlier.  (This in spite of the fact that we got great competition for the deal – with more bond-posted bidders on the final auction, according to the federal bankruptcy judge, than he had EVER seen in such a proceeding).