Catalogs are underwritten on trailing NPS, which is what the catalog was paid. Pace & Handy Co. audits every registration, recording and writer credit at the MLC to find what it’s owed and isn’t collecting: unclaimed shares, unmatched usage, and income paid to other parties. Recover it, and the new income is valued at your multiple.
Mechanical leakage isn’t in the LTM numbers, so it isn’t in the purchase price. Every dollar of recurring income recovered after close is valued at the multiple you paid, and again at exit. No new capital, no new rights acquired. Just income the catalog already owns.
Recurring income from shares and recordings that weren’t paying the catalog. Valued at the multiple.
Unmatched royalties the MLC is holding, back to January 2021, released with interest once the recordings are matched. Cash on top.
The audit runs on the MLC’s public data, before the LOI or before close. No seller access, no data-room request, no signal to the seller.
Income the catalog is owed but not collecting. Unclaimed shares, unmatched recordings, unregistered works, writers left off registrations. Value add that isn’t in the price.
Recordings matched to other parties’ registrations, duplicate registrations the money follows, competing claims on the same works. Price it in, or cover it in the reps and warranties.
Every registration, the share on each, every co-publisher and administrator. Check the seller’s stated share against what the MLC actually pays on.
In the catalogs we’ve measured, the top works are close to fully registered and the deep catalog is not. In one multi-platinum catalog, the top 10% of works by attached recordings were 87.9% registered. The bottom half: 48.8%. The hits carry the valuation. The open share sits in the tail that comes with them.
Closing doesn’t move the money; the MLC does. Until the transfer is processed, the prior administrator keeps collecting, and any registration the transfer misses is leakage from day one. We list every registration the seller’s share sits on, with every co-publisher and administrator, so the transfer covers the whole catalog.
Every finding comes with the filing that captures it: matches for unmatched recordings, registrations for missing works and missing writers, tickets for recordings matched to the wrong work. Your team approves. We file through your MLC account and follow each one through to the fix. Then we protect the asset through the hold: monthly monitoring for new claims on your works, new mismatches, new open shares. On Enterprise, an alert the moment a new registration picks up one of your recordings.
Starting in early 2027, the MLC distributes its unmatched royalties to the whole market by market share, oldest month first, starting with January 2021. Each month that distributes before its recordings are matched is upside written off. The earlier the audit runs, the more of the catch-up you keep.
A fast read on how clean the catalog is at the MLC, from public data, before you spend on diligence.
Upside, income at risk and title at the MLC, registration by registration.
The full list of registrations the transfer has to cover.
Filings that capture the value add, then monthly monitoring.
A catalog that’s clean at the MLC for the next buyer’s diligence.
Yes. The audit runs on the MLC’s public data. Give us the writers’ names and IPIs, or the seller’s schedule of works.
No. We don’t contact the seller or the MLC during an audit.
The MLC’s public data shows registrations, shares, recordings and usage records, not dollars. We quantify what’s open, registration by registration and store by store, so your model can price it.
U.S. digital mechanicals at the MLC, the publishing side. We check writer claims against BMI, ASCAP and SESAC. Performance income and master income are outside it.
Yes, catalog by catalog, writer by writer.
You, through your MLC account. We prepare every filing and follow it up with you.