Financial Buyer

The seller, Worldwide Technologies, LLC (WWT), was founded in 2006 by Mike Jones and Kenny Whitworth out of a small facility in Franklin, KY. Under Mike and Kenny’s leadership, WWT expanded operations through continued investment in people, cutting-edge new technologies, and an unwavering commitment to customer satisfaction.

There are two types of buyers: strategic buyers and financial buyers. Commercial lenders, family offices, private equity funds, mezzanine funds, independent investors, and other capital providers are all financial buyers. Strategic buyers include everything else. It can be beneficial to entertain both financial and strategic buyers when you are selling your business. Still, it is important to understand how financial buyers think and what you’re dealing with as you work through conversations and negotiations.

While you may be hearing that the M&A market is currently active, numbers speak volumes. A recent article from U.S. News cited that private equity (PE) has inked more than 2,300 deals for the first five months of 2021. Year-over-year, this is just over a 21% increase in deal volume. In fact, according to Pitchbook data, in the first half of 2021, PE firms closed on 3,708 deals worth a combined $456.6 billion. That’s almost two-thirds of the $711.6 billion deal value recorded in the entire year of 2020, and the two years prior. It is estimated that there is roughly $3 trillion of dry powder—also known as available funds—on hand for investment, with even a large amount of assets under management.

Financial buyers are the companies we work with that are typically labeled as private equity (PE), a family office, a hedge fund, etc. In the traditional sense, a financial buyer is primarily concerned with the cash flow generated by a company or asset that they acquire. They think about investment opportunities (clients to us) through the rate of return they can obtain from years of bottom-line enhancement and an eventual resale of the asset at a premium, or much higher valuation, than when they bought it. Like trading stocks, but with more hands-on involvement, they wish to “buy low and sell high.”

When financial buyers think of HVAC contractors, they see an industry ripe for consolidation. The trend of HVAC consolidation started a few years ago and has not slowed down.

Many buyers, particularly those working at private equity shops and family offices, have experience in larger markets and, therefore, with more financially oriented, data-driven sellers. If this describes your background, it can be helpful to consider the following insights about sellers in the middle markets. You might be surprised by some of these realities

These are customary in bulge bracket deals. And the middle markets are growing more sophisticated to become similar to larger markets. However, not every tool used in larger markets warrants transplanting. Benchmark International clients rarely offer management presentations and we have no plan to change that practice. Here are reasons why we take that view, and why you should welcome the decision as a buyer.

Over the years, we’ve collected the questions acquirers most often ask about our relationships with our clients. We hope you will find working with us to be a beneficial experience and invite you to learn a bit more about our relationship with our clients by looking over these most frequently asked questions.

At Benchmark International, we work exclusively on the sell-side, so we would love to say, “The way to do a re-trade is to never do a re-trade.” However, when you have completed countless deals, there are times when we are tied so closely into those deals that we know the terms of the original offer do not stand up to the target company’s actual position following due diligence. In other words, we will admit when there is a legitimate reason to re-trade a deal term, including the price.

At Benchmark International, we see hundreds of letters of intent (LOI), term sheets, and heads of terms every year. And though the title of the document changes from location to location, we see acquirers making the same mistakes across the globe. These mistakes cause delays, lead to good LOIs not being signed, and lead to LOIs being signed but then resulting in nothing more than blown deal costs (and angry sellers). We would like to offer a little advice from the sell-side about how to make your offers come across in the best possible light. 1. Do not include an automatic extension to the exclusivity period.

Our seller clients know that we see quite a few offers come through every week, month, and year and they expect us to provide our input on the timeframes that are “market.” As this is a buyer-seller neutral point and a strong set of mutual expectations is productive to achieving a closing, we want to give you an idea as to what is happening on our side of the table.

Acquiring an existing business can offer great advantages over starting a new business from scratch, especially if the target business is thriving and holds more opportunities for growth. When considering the purchase of a company, you should take certain steps so that you can be confident that you are minimizing your risk and making a smart move. Use this comprehensive checklist to help you ask the right questions and guide you through the process. 

As we work exclusively in the mid and lower-mid markets, we see many deals succeed, and some wither. In an effort to have more of the former and less of the latter, we would like to share our core philosophies with the belief that helping you understand them will make working with us a more rewarding experience.

The Complete Guide to Buying a BusinessBy Fred Steingold J.D.

There has been a steep incline in private equity investors buying SaaS (software as a service) companies over the last five years with PE firms investing in, recapitalising, and outright buying numerous SaaS companies. In fact, private equity accounted for 2.5% of all private equity portfolio acquisitions in 2018.

CBInsights has published its annual survey on 2018 corporate venture capital (CVC). Globally, 2,740 deals were completed raising $52.95 billion. This equated to an increase in capital raised by approximately 47% over 2017 and deals increased 32% over the same period. The average CVC deal size reached an all-time high of $26.3 million.

If you are considering selling your business, it is important to dedicate some thought to the type of sale that best allows you achieve your goals. Do you believe a full sale where you walk away from the company after closing is best for you?  Are you the type of person who would work well with a strategic partner that, together, will allow for accelerated company growth?  Is there an amount of time you would like to continue working after the transaction with a plan to slowly exit over time?  Determining the type of sale that appears the most attractive (I only say ‘appears’ because many owners change their mind after learning what the market has to offer and will find a more attractive sale type than what was initially assumed to be the ‘best’) will also allow you to gain an understanding for the most likely type of buyer.

As M&A activity increases worldwide, unfortunately so does cyber-crime. Now whilst the two are in no way related, there is no hiding the fact that there has been a number of high profile incidents in recent times, with major companies such as eBay, Target and Yahoo! all being the victims of such crimes.