Of course it will affect the mechanic greatly.  The mechanic has a shop.  That is an asset, and belongs to the company.  Even a trivial mechanic shop is going to be worth at least $500K.  So now if the mechanic wants to sell his shop, we're talking a $1MM (shop, cash on hand, value of earnings) transaction.

This is the whole problem with the G&M (and media) these days.  They provide some decent data and then the writer completely messes up the analysis.