The Problem: Valuation of a company which owns a fuel-burning technology.  The patents are for a proven technology that allows most liquid fuels to be burned in a gas turbine, increasing efficiency and decreasing pollution.

Bearing West’s Recommendations:

1. Concentrate on making an income stream from monitoring and maintenance. This is similar to the elevator business, where the elevator company makes most of its money by maintaining the equipment.
2. Look abroad for opportunities. This invention came at the same time that shale gas (fracking) has gotten quite inexpensive in North America. So, go abroad, and especially pitch to governments. 

3. Realize that the Investment Bankers that you have hired have conflicted interests, in that their loyalty will be to the large corporate client who will be repeat business. You are paying the Bankers, but you are a One-And-Done client.

The Problem: How to align the interests of the client, firm, and agent?  Purplebricks is dominant in the UK real estate business, and was trying to enter the US market.

My work: BearingWest performed a series of scenario analyses studying the profitability of agents and firm under different volume/pricing/expense/market share scenarios. The firm was putting its effort in the wrong places, did not ever find a model that would work, and ended up leaving the U.S. market.

The Problem: What is the least-cost tax strategy when following tax/gallon rules?

Our Recommendation:

1. Use Excel as a tool to calculate the best strategy, and run each month.  Then decide.
2. Implement a more structured input system of data to avoid problems with tax authorities due to cutting corners. Blenders seem to be copy/pasting results.  This would be a costly violation.