[putlake]

You're right; there are many unknowns. But that doesn't mean you pull a number out of thin air. M&A teams use all kinds of models to make financial projections and calculate ranges for valuation. Even for the LinkedIn acquisition, other bidders backed away because per their calculations, the deal was getting too pricey.

The rounding thing I think is only a signal. When you get a rounded offer, you feel that the buyer has room to go up. When you get a precise offer, the signal is the buyer has an exact notion of how much this is worth to them, so they might not be willing to go much higher than their initial offer. It's a psychological thing which will probably have a smaller effect in a bidding war.