Due diligence is all about intelligence. While quite a bit of this intelligence is conveyed by financials and historical performance it does not tell the whole story about a company's potential value. Financial valuations based on future forecasts need the underlying context of how a company arrived at its current performance. End of year numbers are the conclusion of a string of decisions and actions by management, employees, customers, vendors, investors, and regulators. Unlocking future value means digging into how a company operates that ultimately ends in a string of numbers describing its financial performance. Only by digging into the "why" and "how" can investors and acquirers determine the strategies for unlocking the hidden value needed to justify valuations to earn outsized returns on investments.