What is a teaser in a business sale?

What a teaser is for

A teaser has one job: to get the right buyers to ask for more, without telling anyone which business it is. It is the first document most buyers see in a managed sale, and for many of them it is the only one, because they read it and decide the business is not for them.

It is short. An M&A advisory firm, IMAP, describes a teaser as roughly one to two pages, against a memorandum that often runs to dozens. That brevity is deliberate: a buyer reviewing many opportunities wants to know quickly whether this one fits their size, sector and region.

The same document is sometimes called a blind profile, a one-pager or an executive summary. In the UK it is usually prepared by the seller’s corporate finance adviser or broker, though owners selling on their own prepare one too.

What usually goes in

Most teasers cover the same ground, in roughly this order:

• A one-line description that does not identify the business, such as “a specialist distributor of industrial components”.
• A broad location, often a region or simply “UK”, rather than a town.
• What the business does, who it sells to in general terms, and how it earns its money.
• Scale, usually shown as bands or rounded figures: turnover, profit or EBITDA, and headcount.
• The strengths a buyer is likely to care about, such as recurring revenue, a broad customer base or a management team that will stay.
• The kind of transaction on offer, for example a full sale or a majority stake, and why the owner is selling.
• The next step: who to contact and the fact that an NDA comes before anything further.

What stays out, and why it is harder than it looks

The name stays out, obviously. So does anything that would let a competitor, supplier or member of staff work out who it is. The government-backed nibusinessinfo.co.uk guidance gives customer names and pricing structure as examples of information to hold back until buyers have shown they are serious.

The difficulty is that a business is rarely identified by one fact. It is identified by three harmless facts in combination. “Family-owned”, “founded in 1987” and “the only stockist of a particular brand in the South West” might each be fine alone; together they could point to one company. Reading a draft as a well-informed local competitor would read it is a common last check. If a buyer does recognise the business, the NDA they have not yet signed offers no protection, which is why care at this stage matters more than at any later one.

• Exact founding years, unusual accreditations and named brands or suppliers.
• Precise turnover or staff numbers that match a filed set of accounts.
• Photographs of premises, vehicles or products with distinctive branding.
• Details of a well-known contract or customer win.

How buyers read a teaser

Buyers, whether trade buyers, private equity funds, search funds or individuals, often screen many teasers for each one they pursue. Many read in roughly the same order: size first, then sector and region, then the reason for the sale, then whatever the teaser claims as the business’s strengths.

Specific claims tend to carry more weight than general ones. “Long-standing customer relationships” says little; “the ten largest customers have traded with the business for an average of eight years” (an invented example) says something a buyer can later test. The second version also commits the seller to a fact the memorandum and due diligence will have to support, which is why advisers usually check every claim in a teaser against the records before it goes out.

Where the teaser sits in a sale

In a typical managed process the order runs like this:

1. The teaser goes to a list of possible buyers chosen by the seller and their adviser.
2. Buyers who are interested sign an NDA.
3. They receive the information memorandum, which names the business and sets out its figures in full.
4. Some make indicative offers, and the seller chooses who goes further.
5. The chosen buyer runs due diligence through a data room before a sale agreement is signed.

Because the teaser comes first, it sets expectations that every later document has to meet. A buyer who reads one description of the business on page one of the teaser and a different picture in the memorandum will notice.

Getting the figures right before they go out

The figures in a teaser are brief, but they are the ones a buyer remembers. If the teaser says profit was in a certain band and the memorandum, or later the buyer’s accountants, find a lower figure, the conversation tends to move from the business to the discrepancy.

The common sources of trouble are management accounts that do not agree with the filed accounts, profit adjusted for one-off costs that turn out to recur, and a customer list more concentrated than the summary suggests. Our guide to EBITDA add-backs explains the adjustments buyers usually test. The free readiness check lists what a buyer is likely to question about nine of your own figures, without valuing the business.

Showing turnover or profit in a teaser describes the business. It is not a valuation, and in a managed sale a teaser normally says nothing about price.

Who writes it

Most teasers are written by the seller’s adviser, working from information the owner provides, and approved by the owner before anything is sent. The adviser also decides, with the owner, who receives it and in what order. An owner selling without an adviser writes it themselves, often with their accountant.

On this site the document is called the teasr. teasr AI drafts it from the figures and answers the seller has supplied, and a person at teasr reviews it before it goes anywhere. On an adviser’s deal it goes out under the adviser’s firm name; owners selling with their accountant can use the same tools on an owner-led sale. You can read a sample teasr on an invented business. Advisers can read how the teasr and memorandum are prepared.

Whoever writes it, this is general information rather than advice on your sale. An adviser, accountant or solicitor can tell you what suits your business and your circumstances.