At this year’s ACG Charlotte Deal Crawl, Huebner Marketing sponsored a dynamic panel discussion on innovation in M&A and strategies for partnership across the deal ecosystem.
Panel Highlights: “Innovation in M&A and Strategies for Partnership”
Our distinguished panelists brought diverse perspectives from across the deal ecosystem:
- Ed Bagdasarian – CEO, Intrepid Investment Bankers
- Mark Miller – Private Equity Value Creation Practice Leader, Forvis Mazars
- Brett Hubler – Partner, Troutman Pepper
- Trey Fletcher – CFO, Crete United
- Ashton Belk – President, Huebner Marketing
Key Insights:
Dealmakers at ACG’s recent panel shared practical wisdom on what drives M&A success:
- Do thorough prep work before going to market – Especially Quality of Earnings (Q of E) reports. Rushing leads to problems.
- Direct buyer-seller relationships matter more than working through intermediaries. Trust and chemistry help deals succeed.
- Corporate culture is a major value driver. It’s hard to replicate and crucial for integration success.
- Marketing tools are evolving – Video content and social media now play key roles in deal processes.
- More diligence required – The current market requires more diligence scrutiny due to economic conditions, but panelists are optimistic about 2025 activity.
Market Outlook
The panel declared its optimism for 2025, noting several positive indicators:
- Increased pitch activity
- Improving portfolio company performance
- Potential interest rate stabilization
- A growing pipeline of new opportunities
Looking Forward
The discussion highlighted how successful M&A requires more than just financial engineering – it demands intentional brand building, careful integration planning, and strategic communication throughout the deal lifecycle.
Watch the full panel discussion:
Want to learn more about maximizing value through strategic brand positioning? Contact us to discuss how we can help optimize your brand strategy across the deal lifecycle.
Transcript
SPEAKERS
Ed Bagdasarian, Mark Miller, Brett Hubler, Andy Wright, Ashton Belk, Trey Fletcher
Andy Wright 00:00
This morning is sponsored by Huebner Marketing. We thank them for their sponsorship and their involvement in this year’s deal crawl. Our topic for today is innovation in M and A and strategies for partnership across the deal ecosystem. We’re excited to have a number of experts across the deal ecosystem here this morning on the panel to provide their expertise and insights on that topic and a little bit of insight on the market and where we are from an M and A perspective. I’ll let the panelists introduce themselves in just a moment. But I’m Andy Wright. I’m a director at Black Arch Partners in town, and I’m an ACG board member and past president of our ACG Charlotte chapter. Black Arch is a middle-market investment bank based here in Charlotte. We are first and foremost process experts in M and A, both sell side and buy side, but we’re also industry experts across a number of core sectors. We focus on companies that are sponsor-backed, as well as family founder-owned, and that typically have about 15 to 50 million in EBITDA. I’ll be moderating today’s discussion, and we do want to make this interactive, so please, if we’re discussing a topic that’s of interest that you have a question about, as we go through the topics, don’t hesitate to raise your hand. We’ll call on you and just address your question. Then, we hope to be able to leave time at the end for Q and A as well, but we want to make it as interactive as possible throughout. So, before we dive into a number of topics, let me let the panelists introduce themselves. Mark, why don’t we start with you? We’ll just go down the row here.
Mark Miller 01:46
Thanks, Andy. Good morning. Mark Miller, I’m a partner at Forvis Mazars. I started my career as an industrial engineer doing process re-engineering for corporate clients as part of Arthur Andersen in Atlanta. When Anderson became history, about the time I made partner, I joined Alvarez and Marcel. I started a business consulting group for that firm and focused on private equity clients and merger integration. I spent some time working with VISTA equity partners as the chief operating officer and a couple of portfolio companies there, working on value creation, roll-ups, etc. A few years back, I joined what was then Dixon Hughes Goodman as a partner in leading the private equity value creation practice. And we’ve built that up since becoming Forvis, and now Forvis Mazars. And so, I lead a team focused on the private equity market, mostly on post-closed value creation.
Ed Bagdasarian 02:52
I’m Ed. I’m the CEO of Intrepid Investment Bankers. We are based in Los Angeles. We have six partners, we started in 2010. We are national, middle-market investment bank. I started the m&a business in 1989, helping build another firm called Barrington Associates, which we sold to Wells Fargo Securities. And two years after Wells acquired us, Wells acquired Wachovia and we got acquainted with all the folks here in Charlotte at the time. In 2010, we left Wells and started Intrepid, our current firm. In 2019, we were acquired by MUFG, the Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, which is the largest bank in Japan and the seventh-largest bank worldwide. Today, we operate as their advisory arm in North America, and we have approximately 90 bankers in offices in Charlotte, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and San Francisco.
Brett Hubler 03:59
Morning. My name is Brett Hubler. I’m a partner at Troutman Pepper. We’re a law firm with offices across the nation. We merged in 2020, Trout and Sanders and Pepper Hamilton to create a 1200-lawyer law firm, and in January, we’ll merge with Locklord to have a 1600-person law firm, making us top 20 size in the US, as far as the number of people, headcount wise. Our corporate group focuses primarily on the M and A transactions and its strategic or private equity. My practice is a mix of strategic and private equity deal work, platform, add-ons, carve-outs, and anything you can think of. So good to be here, and it’s been a good number of years every to do this with the group and to see everybody. Familiar faces.
Trey Fletcher 04:52
Hi, my name is Trey Fletcher. I am the CFO of Crete United. We are a mechanical, electrical, and plumbing company focused on energy efficiency, which we refer to as the built environment. We are focused in the commercial and industrial sector of the industry. We are owned by Ridgemont equity partners here. So portfolio company operating, we have done 47 acquisitions in four years. We average eight to 12 acquisitions a year, somewhere in the ballpark. We are fully integrated. So we have done full all 47 partners of ours are 100% integrated into our portfolio. We do it in about 100 days. And I own pretty much all the back end of the company, from finance, accounting, HR, IT integration, so on, and so forth. So looking forward to a good conversation.
Ashton Belk 05:44
Hey everybody, I’m Ashton Belk, and I’m the president of Huebner Marketing. So, we’re a firm based out of Denver, Colorado. We primarily focus on brand communications, or brand strategy and communications. So we work with companies from anywhere from manufacturing to multi-brand companies, and then really across the deal flow. So we have different tactical approaches that we set out to do based on where you’re at and where we can problem solve. So that’s really where this panel has become. You know, such it’s a great topic for us because where our innovation really comes from is through our partnerships, we look at what the needs are, we find any holes or problems that they bring to us, and then we look to be able to find ways to be able to have creative solutions around them.
Andy Wright 06:33
Well, thanks, everyone, and thanks for joining this morning. Mark, why don’t we begin our discussion with you? And if you could just talk about from a value creation perspective, what you and your team focus on and how you really help clients maximize performance and create value.
Mark Miller 06:52
I’ll start with a story. A few years back, I looked at a SIM for a company, I was at VISTA at the time, that was in the market. It was a software company that had seven products that they acquired and some they had built. And it had nice revenue trends and some assumptions about a good EBITDA performance. And then at the end, it said, and we think we have about $2 million in unrealized synergies available to the buyer. And this is perfect, right? Unrealized synergies, meaning I’ve got a management team that, for whatever reason, never got around to it. And so frankly, that’s my passion: how do we find and execute on those 2 million of unrealized synergies before we go to sell the company? And unlike maybe a traditional corporate-focused business consulting firm that’s very functional focus, right? I’m an Oracle expert, an HR expert, and a supply chain expert, etc. In PE, we need to move fast, and we need to be able to adjust to the priorities of that portfolio company. And so our focus is really being strong project managers first, helping clients articulate and understand based on the vision of where we want to go: What are the 5, 6, 7, or 12 things that are going to keep us from realizing those $2 million in unrealized synergies? And that could be anything, right? It could be we’ve got to rationalize skews. We’ve got to take advantage of better HR systems. We need to re-engineer the shop floor. We need to upgrade our ERP. We need to make sure the data in our ERP is the same as the data in our CRM. There’s just a host of things and a lot of times, the difference between achieving full value and falling short is 100 small things. Our goal is to create a team that works side by side with management, rolls up their sleeves, articulate what those things are, and lay out a road map to get there. Now we are organized. We’re not all utility players. Our clients typically ask us for things in three key areas. One is, call it finance professionalization. So, the new platform, getting them from cash to gap, getting to a monthly close, going from maybe a spreadsheet in QuickBooks environment to something more sophisticated, more scalable, and that leads me to the second key area, which is ERP. And so, we focus on relationships with the ERP solutions that serve the middle market. And we understand, at least at a functional user level, how those can be deployed within the organization, the training that comes around it, and the requirements process that we want to go through. Lastly, we have a lot of folks who are focused simply on the rollup. How do we help clients integrate acquisitions, and how do we help them get better at implementing acquisitions or integrating acquisitions in the future? And then within that is all the things you’re going to address, supply chain, shop floor, HR, and if we don’t have those capabilities in-house, we will help you find a partner that does and make them part of the project team and part of the transformation plan.
Andy Wright 10:51
And Trey, maybe building on that as an operator. What are some of the key tools and strategies that you all use at Crete to create value, both for the larger platform but then also as you continue to integrate new add-ons?
Trey Fletcher 11:04
Yeah, when we’re looking at acquisitions, our focus is primarily, you know, outside of you get past the industry and kind of what we’re doing is we’re looking specifically at kind of the owner-operator model and how much they’re involved with the business. What does their top line look like? What is their growth strategy? How do they think about growth strategy? We understand kind of where our strategic pillar is and what value we can bring back to them, being a lot of the integration side, teaching them some of the back end, understanding how to do a lot of the integration, the systems, stuff of that nature, that we can ultimately help to create value. But what we need, and what we focus on specifically, is whether the owner knows how to maneuver within their industry. Can they continue to expand? Do they have a growth platform that they are already thinking about? Is it an M and A or a tuck-in focus strategy, or is it all organic? Is this something that we’re gonna have to add on to? These are all areas that we start to vet very specifically. How well do they operate their company? Can they manage their cash flow as part of it? Do they need additional assistance on that, where and how? Where exactly do they need support? And our focus is really about understanding how they do that, where they’re at specifically, and their life cycle, and then adding on to that whether we need to supplement in different areas across the board.
Andy Wright 12:24
That’s great. And Ed, as an investment banker, CEO of Intrepid, your firm… Talk a little bit about positioning and the importance of positioning and helping your clients think about positioning their company, both before a sale and then through a sale process.
Ed Bagdasarian 12:40
I think preparing the company and client for the process and specifically spending time on positioning is one of the most important value drivers in the whole process. So, before we get started, we challenge our clients to think about the vision of their business. What is that business going to look like five years from now to compel buyers today to pay an outsized model? If that older entrepreneur cannot define the business, then they’re not ready to go to market. So we challenge them. We talk to them about, what are the value drivers that motivate buyers to gain out size multiple, which are really the growth of the business, the business model of the business, the profitability and the risk parameters. So, in each one of those buckets, there are lots of things that do that, right? So we asked them to really articulate how this business can be a lot more in the future than it is today. A good friend of mine was the head of acquisitions for a Fortune 500 company, and I asked him one day, I said, Listen, what are you looking for in a target? And he says, like, one of the basic questions I ask is, if that business shut down today, Will anybody miss him? Will your clients miss you? Who knows you’re gone? Or do they go, “Whatever, I can go to five other competitors and do the same thing?” And that’s a really profound question when you think about it. And you know, we ask people to define their businesses and then define the roadmap to get to that vision that is bigger and better than what the company is today. I’ll give you a simple example. A few years ago, we were selling a company that provided equipment and supplies to professional tattoo artists. I didn’t even know there was such an industry. And we learned funny things in our business. And the challenge with that is an incredibly profitable business, they identify the number of acquisition targets that they wanted to grow through acquisitions. The biggest problem with that business was that it was a rather limited industry. There are only so many tattoo artists in this country. They’re only selling so much product. So the challenge that we gave them was, what other markets don’t think about yourself as an equipment and a product supplier to the tattoo industry? What are the common characteristics that you can define to enter other markets? And if you don’t think about the tattoo industry and just say, what are they selling it? Who are they selling it to? They’re selling essential components to a professional audience who was serving a consumer. There was very much for a Passion-Driven enthusiast and market. So, if you take a step back and say, what other markets are like that? You might come to find: pet grooming. So pet groomers buy professional equipment to put to, you know, to grow pets, and pets are a passion and enthusiast part of the market. So they defined that. They went after that market, and not only did we get a great multiple for that, but four years later, through add-on acquisitions, they had defined a massive market. That was probably the best investment that that private equity firm ever made. So you just have to challenge the owners to define that business as bigger and better than what it is today, and then give them the roadmap to show the buyers how they will get it. It’s gotta be real. Can’t just talk about it. Just gotta make it happen.
Andy Wright 15:57
Always helpful to think about adjacencies and ways to expand the addressable market. Absolutely! So, Ashton, positioning is something that helps your firm create value. Talk a little bit about how you think about brand equity and creating value through brand equity and positioning and how your company helps with that.
Ashton Belk 16:20
lSure. Well, to Ed’s point, I mean, we have a lot of synergies in the way that we attack brands. But first off, when we’re talking about brand equity, it’s really, as you were talking about, the reason that people choose to do business with you at the end of the day. So why did why do they care? Why do they choose you over their competition? But for our firm, we really focus on the heart of our business, which is the brand position. So, we’re making sure that we’re optimizing brands to be able to go to market with strength. We have a process that we call doing the relevancy roadmap, or a relevancy report to start off with, which is really a positioning report. What we do is we go through and we meet with stakeholders at every phase. So executives from the internal company, we meet with customers, we meet with employees, if it’s manufacturing, we walk the manufacturing floor. We talk about why they care so much about, you know, “the way that they bend the metal.” It all matters.
But we’re really looking for any of those differentiators that are going to be able to set the business apart. So what makes them unique or different, and what problem are they really solving for their end consumer? So, we work with the stakeholder interviews. We really go into doing a messaging audit, too. So one of the biggest pieces there is you have these things that you say about yourself internally or what you want to be known for, but the big shift is that may not actually be what is happening outside. So how people talk about you outside, what you say about yourself inside, where’s the gap? So, we look at a gap analysis. We break down where the messaging is, where the narrative is, where you actually want to drive the narrative to and be able to craft a communications plan that’s able to accelerate your position in the market. So we take that and do a value index. We were able to figure out what message really would resonate the best in the market and where that hole is that you really can fit into. So based on that competitive analysis, then we look at, okay, so we have this position that we think would be your best go-to-market strategy, and create a marketing roadmap to support it. So then we go into execution mode and bring in our creative team that goes in and actually takes you to market with that specific position in mind with strength. So that’s really the process we go through.
One of our clients came to us as an example of it, who had what he considered a bag of parts. It was a PE-backed company, and he had been given, you know, six to seven companies in the last couple of years. And he was like, okay, so I have a bag of parts. I don’t know how they should all operate together. We have all these opportunities. They all serve each other in some capacity, but the equity isn’t there. We could be selling more than we are. So we went through when we did the report with him and with their company and found that really what they needed was to be able to push their brand equity up. So, we created a holding company that was able to really focus on all of the aspects of the other companies. So they all pushed into an overarching company that then had two different divisions. And all of these divisions were able to then speak to one another better. They had an underlying narrative that told a bigger story and gave them power against their individual companies. So, all of a sudden, they had a much richer approach to the market and how they could serve. One was a PPE-focused wing, and the other was an environmental solution. So they both helped each other, and they could cross-pollinate much better because of it. And then the client also had the opportunity, based on that, to sell either individual divisions or they could sell it as a whole. So, really weigh each stakeholder’s need of what was created out of that company, and then take it to market, to be able to grow it, and then be able to move towards exit.
Andy Wright 20:21
Always helpful to self-assess a little bit, right? And make sure that what you think the market is seeing is accurate, right? Having a third-party point of view may help. Let’s switch gears a little bit. Ed, I’ll come back to you on the sell side. Can you talk about maybe some ways in which you’re using innovative tools to make the process a little more seamless and also to make sure that you’re maximizing value as you take companies to market?
Ed Bagdasarian 20:52
Its innovation and mergers and acquisitions don’t always go together. It’s probably one of the most backward industries that I ever come across. I think the biggest innovation in m&a has been the virtual data room. In the last 30 years, we’ve been making books shorter by using more graphics and using fewer words. I mean, that’s the Innovation! I’m being half-facetious. Baby steps. Baby steps, right? No. But listen, I think that what we have noticed over the last, you know, three to four decades of deal-making is an increased use of third-party advisors and reports to validate what we say about a company, of things like what Ashton said. You know, getting a brand audit done, if you can do that before you take the company to market. If you can have a market study done that validates the growth rate of the business, the tailwinds that drive an industry, and the risks of any potential headwinds or regulatory risks. If you’re selling a software company, do a code audit before you go to market. If you’re selling a heavily-regulated industry like healthcare, for example, do a compliance to make sure that your billing codes are appropriate. Whatever you could do to validate how strong the management team is and the operations are so you don’t run into problems later in the process. We’ve seen the industry go in that direction. Now, that has had a little bit of a strange correlation to it in that we’ve seen private equity become overly reliant on advisors, and I think, to some extent, that’s kind of dumbed down the instincts of the old folks who used to do private equity deals. You know, 20 years ago, we used to see a lot of instinct – people taking risks because their noses told them that this is a great business. And I get the consultants are saying this, but we get at this, and that’s how a lot of the money was made.
Now it’s almost like we see a lot of the new-gen, not to knock the new generation of private equity folks, but there’s so much reliance on third-party reports that almost the third-party consultant will drive the will determine the outcome of a transaction. I think we’ve taken it to a bit of an extreme, but what we do to create that value is, again, to the extent possible, we encourage almost every one of our sell side clients to do a quality of earnings before we take the company to market. If there are any surprises, we want to know ahead of time. We want them to do a legal audit. We want to make sure that their IP is really buttoned down. If they’re in a consumer-oriented business. We want to make sure they’re not making any claims that they cannot support so that they can get nailed in due diligence later on. So we really kind of bulletproof the business before we go to market because diligence is very, very difficult if you cannot prove your position.
One of the things we do, actually, for many of our clients, is we have a separate buy-side group inside Intrepid. This is a search team. It’s not an advisory team. We do advisory buy-side advisory through our m&a anchors, but oftentimes, we identify targets, potential targets for the client, so that as part of their growth strategy, we can articulate an acquisition strategy for that. It’s very powerful to go into a process and say, “Here’s 15 or 20, targets that we’ve identified.”
I mean, Trey, if you’re buying a company and you notice that they already have ten acquisition targets lined up, you tend to get more excited about that, right? That’s what we do. We go in the process already with that teed up. And I tell you, sponsors love that, because already you tell them, here’s ten billion of incremental EBITDA that you can execute on the first year. So we prepare that way ahead of time. So in terms of innovation, just use third-party consultants to, you know, within reason to validate what you’re going to tell them, and then paint the picture of how this company is going to be bigger and better than it is today, but give a more credible roadmap to get there.
Andy Wright 24:52
I completely agree. We are big believers in taking the time up front to prepare before going to market and making sure that, as you said, Ed, iit’s bulletproof, right? And everything can hold up well.
Ed Bagdasarian 25:05
You’re right, but that’s tricky, because investment bankers, by their very nature, tend to be very transactional. You know? They see a target, they go, I gotta sell this thing. I gotta close it in six months, right? How many times do we tell our client you’re not ready? Wait for 12 months; you have to get your stuff together. And we do that because I was then asking the story. But there was an Omni channel retailer that approached us three years ago, and we basically told them you’re not ready. You got to clean. We gave him a list of things to clean up in 12 months; he stayed off the market. He cleaned it up and made a very successful transaction, but he had to work on his brand and some of the agreements they used. He was in the franchising business as well. So there’s a lot of cleanup to do to get it right. And a lot of bankers, you know, don’t do that. They go like, Hey, let’s go to market. We got a live one here. Just go take it to market and close the deal.
Trey Fletcher 25:55
I cannot agree more with you. We’ve done eight deals this year. We probably should have done 14. Yes, we’ve had more in LOI that ultimately fell apart. And they always fall apart in two areas. They didn’t do their due diligence on Q A B. The Q A B comes in a million dollars lower than what it should have been, or multiple million dollars. And it’s basically whether you’re going to re-trade or not re-trade on it. And the second is the legal side. They don’t run the traps on the legal side. And we get in there, and it basically falls apart in the last minute, because they can’t get all the way through it. And it’s very frustrating when you go through when you look at a SIM, and it says one thing, then you go to the diligence, and it doesn’t add up. And it’s a big concern for us.
Ed Bagdasarian 26:30
And in a market where the valuations are so stretched for quality targets, it’s particularly vulnerable to retrades, right? I mean, it doesn’t take much to derail a buyer and say, I was bidding 12 times. It’s not worth 12 times with all the all the warts that I’ve discovered in due diligence. Now you have to bust the process. Frankly, bankers are largely responsible for that because they overstretch the expectations of the client, right? There’s the rubber band that is stretched, so there’s no room for surprises. And then what happens? A lot of sponsors come into the process anxious to get into management presentations. They bid prices that they know they’re not going to deliver on, and they re-trade. So, part of the job of the banker is to read the tea leaves. Don’t just let everybody who says, I’m willing to bid 15 times. Is that real? Because now you set expectations for the client, and when all the final bids come in at 11, it’s a huge disappointment. Instead of saying 11 times, it’s a great price. No, I had 15 on the table. No, that wasn’t real to begin with. So it’s a little bit of expectation management,
Andy Wright 27:31
Yeah, yeah, for sure, that’s really good insight. Agree with all that. It is interesting how, when you get into diligence, if there’s one issue that comes up and makes people question a lot of other things, right? When they really don’t need to. So, you have to be very diligent about proactively preparing ahead of time to prevent them.
Brett Hubler 27:49
Even on legal you need to think through how to message issues if you identify them, right? It’s great to hear that you’re saying, “Do a legal audit” because a lot of times, nothing’s done, and they get data rooms prepared, and it does not have like, 75% of the stuff that you know will be asked. So make sure that you have a pre-side, like sell-side legal diligence done. Make sure if you find issues that you think are not material that you know the buyer will focus on, understand that 100% and how to message it so that you don’t get bogged down on something later on and turn a 30-day process into a 60 to 90-day process.
Brett Hubler 28:30
That’s what we see a lot. It’s been, like you said, this more recent period; people are not looking past issues. They’re seeing it, and they’re delving deeply because they know there aren’t other buyers to come get it. I feel like every other deal I have now starts off in exclusivity. And I was telling you beforehand, if I’m on buy-side, if the client is close to exclusivity and they find something and I say, “Do you guys want to extend it?” They just say, “You know what we’re going to ask, because we know they’re not going to find anybody else. And so they just go naked as a buyer, which nobody would have done a couple of years ago, and they still close because they know there’s nobody else. And unfortunately, sell side wasn’t organized, and what they thought would be 30 days turned into, you know, hopefully not longer, like that much longer, but long enough that, like, people get frustrated because the work wasn’t done ahead,
Trey Fletcher 29:22
And it covers a couple of areas that we were just talking a little bit about it. When we see it on our side, and that happens multiple times, we start to see a little bit of yellow flag, yellow flag, you start to question whether or not the management team how much, how much they really have control over their business and how much they really know, or are they hiding other things. It goes into so much of ours about brand reputation in the industry and what they’re trying to do, how much they’re going to save, and how much we can continue to grow. And there’s a lot of local values in some of the companies that we buy. If that starts happening, we have to start questioning it, which then immediately starts to make us back off of whether or not we want to continue to move forward.
Ed Bagdasarian 29:57
But in terms of best practices, you know, we were talking a little bit before this panel discussion, that we see, you know, a lot of very regimented processes where bankers don’t allow buyers to come in and ask for a lot of information, a lot of data, and we do the opposite. We like buyers to have a lot of information because then you come in with an informed bid. Why should I let the buyer find out a lot of things after exclusivity is signed? Because the leverage pendulum swings in favor of the buyer, right? So you gotta be measured about it, but we want buyers to know a lot, and frankly, we prepare the management teams, but one of the things that we like to do is allow the chemistry to develop directly between buyer and seller. It’s really important because, ultimately, it’s all about the trust that they develop in each other. There will be a time in the process when that surprise is going to come up, and you want the relationship between the buyer and the seller to have developed enough to where the seller calls the buyer directly and says this is what is going on, and this is what I need you guys to do. I want to do the deal with you but then the credibility is established. If you just hide behind the investment banker wall all the time, that’s a problem. You can’t have that conversation. So it is important to stage it properly but allow a little bit of that chemistry to develop directly.
Andy Wright 31:22
I completely agree and definitely agree with you on the data as well. We’re big believers in doing a lot of work upfront on data and proactively providing the data, to your point, so that people have eyes wide open about the company and performance, and they’re not inclined to retrade later because they have had good information throughout. It increases certainty, and it allows values to hold up throughout the process.
Brett Hubler 31:46
Allows them to see this is continuity too. One thing that we try to do on the legal side is think through, how does like a relationship, whether it’s an employee or a supplier or a customer, factor into post-closing? And if you can, like, create all that information in a manner that can be digested, it really gives the buyer a lot more. I mean, it helps them visualize, right and use that 100-day period really effectively, rather than you can start the clean up beforehand, rather than just losing time. So, we view that as a big point that is a big value add for legal is to help visualize some of that legal stuff, like legal, contractual or employee-based things to help you guys maximize value after.
Ed Bagdasarian 32:25
Ideally, you bring Ashton, and you bring Mark way before the process. The value, the brand development happens way before. I think everybody rushes in the last minute to do everything and that’s not the ideal.
Ashton Belk 32:40
Yeah, and I think, I think there’s just the ways to be able to look at overall and evaluate brand reputation too. So when you’re going through, and you’re doing a brand equity audit, is what we call it, but we’re really looking at anything from, okay, you don’t want to buy a company that has a tarnished brand that you haven’t uncovered. So what are you going to do in that potential year up, leading up to go into the market, to be able to not only squash that, but then to be able to take it on the other side and elevate the brand? What kind of PR do you need to do around it? What kind of community involvement, what kind of ways do you need to be able to elevate the brand so that you end up getting the multiple you’re looking for
Andy Wright 33:20
And, Ashton, you might touch on one more innovative tool that I think is more recent. I agree with Ed that M & A is not the best innovative space, but we find the videos that you produce for processes to be highly valuable from a marketing perspective. We use them on a lot of processes now, so you may touch on what you do there, and the value that you have there,
Ashton Belk 33:45
Sure. So we have partners like Black Arch, where we really have the opportunity to work with very innovative thinkers in the way that we approach our work. We get a partner with, you know, firms like y’all where we go through, and we’re looking at, okay, so we have this investment thesis. We usually get to see it in draft one or two, and we’re looking at, okay, how can we actually take what’s here in this 60-page document? How can we shrink it into three minutes? How can we be able to create a teaser that would go out and you could talk about when it when you actually are utilizing it, because, based off of different teams we worked with, they’re using it at various times in their process, but if it goes out as a teaser before you actually get the SIP, and if you’re looking at okay, so we do management interviews. If management is going to be a part of the sale and they’re going to be one of the key differentiators, we do management interviews. We get them on camera. We are able to showcase whether or not they’re going to be somebody you actually want to do a deal with, a big deal, and then whether or not you have facilities that are local, or you need to be able to show facilities that are across the world. We can go and be able to get that footage from all over so you can have an at-a-glance look at here is what this company all has to offer. Here is the depth and breadth of their operation. And then really highlighting, I think, the unique piece of it is you have the words come off the page, and you’re able to tell a full story, a comprehensive story, about the company. In addition to being able to have every detail about the company that you want, they all put together. So we have that tie back too and this impacts your life because of so you have that full circle. Here’s why the investment is a good deal. Here is what you’re going to expect from management. Here is what you are going to experience when you walk their floor, and this is why it actually impacts the people that you’re sitting next to.
Andy Wright 35:48
Completely agree. It’s a great way to control the narrative from the beginning around providing a good overview of the business and the value proposition. Get exposure to the management team in a way that’s efficient for them, like you said, completely agree.
Ashton Belk 36:03
And I think controlling the narrative is really something that’s so powerful and sometimes isn’t taken as highly as it could be, is being able to craft it and then reaffirm it over and over again, because you know the message, and you know what you want to have being internally owned and then externally provided.
Andy Wright 36:24
Yeah, completely agree. Mark, I welcome you to chime in here on getting companies ready for a sale process. What your team does in that regard, and maybe what more broadly for us was ours. Obviously, you have a lot of tools in your exposure. What you do to make sure that a lot of the prep work that we’re talking about is done before companies go to market.
Mark Miller 36:47
Yeah. I mean, our focus really is on operationalizing vision and strategies. So the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is today, and we think that way in terms of exit, because the exit, in my mind, at least from a strategy standpoint, starts when the acquisition is made, and if we don’t, if the folks in the organization aren’t aligned and working on the things that drive us toward the vision that’s going to show up to a buyer. If our systems and platforms aren’t scalable, they can’t take on more business, more acquisitions, that’s going to show up to a to a buyer. And the value creation road map is really a living, breathing document. And we talk about 90-day plans of this burst of activity when we buy a company, and all the things we’re going to do well, that should never end. You should always be able to point out to a buyer: These are the things we’re doing well. These are the things we’re struggling with, and these are the things we’re doing to overcome that. And you know, our coaching is you should be ready for sale at any given time and act accordingly. And so really, where are my gaps in people? Where are my gaps in process? Where are my gaps in technology? What’s the roadmap that I specifically assign resources to address, and I should be able to point to a buyer at any given time, the deficiencies that exist in the business, but also what I’m doing about it.
Andy Wright 38:35
And Brett, you touched us a little bit already, but as we think about it from a legal perspective, helping companies get ready for a sale. Where do you dig in the most? And maybe what are some of the areas that you find get the most scrutiny as companies are in market?
Brett Hubler Right, I think you’ve touched on a number of things. It depends on the industry. Compliance is huge, and almost every business now has a privacy issue or privacy component that they need to comply with when it comes to prepping a company, getting a Q & A is actually really helpful to the lawyer, because then I can read and figure out what’s the buyer going to focus on. That’s the first document I run to as a sell side lawyer, and even buy side lawyer, and then any third party advisor report I read to understand what the buyer is going to focus on, because the buyers do rely on a lot of these, like third party advisors, and sometimes it harms the messaging, sometimes they like you end up losing the message you’ve created if there’s too much reliance on third party advisors. Some of them aren’t always focused on context, right? So, what we try to do to prepare a seller is do some legal diligence. Think about, I try to think about business continuity. Is this a business that’s going to focus that really relies on the work of employees? Is it a business that relies on the strength of their contracts? Is it a business that relies on the strength of IP and, depending upon what that is, you can really focus on that’s where the buyer’s going to hopefully focus? At least that’s where they should spend their time focusing, and then you can get ahead of whatever issues might be addressed. We had a deal that we did in the last year where you’ll see burnouts are really popular right now, and part of the issue we had was a lot of the employees of this business are really important. And they had an LTIP; they were going to all basically be cashed out if you did the typical thing. But that meant that the earn out probably wasn’t going to be as people weren’t as incentivized to reach the earn out. So we tried to do is say, All right, well, we’re going to structure the LTIP participation for the sale, such as these LTIP like holders, instead of being completely cashed out, they’re basically going to participate in the earn out. So that way they’re going to help the sellers maximize value, be incentivized to maintain business continuity, not leave, because that’s going to hurt the buyer a lot. And hope, you know, and hopefully it works out that well, if it’s a carve-out, those are also things we’re seeing a ton, whether it is strategic or PE players, and on the legal side, that’s when we really try to jump in with the integrators, to make sure we understand is back office going to come along, and if not, what do you need? Because you can’t buy a business if you don’t have a back office or if you’re not ready for the transition. So those are things we really kind of focus on, those sort of, like two very prevalent areas, whether it’s, you know, the IT back office, or contracts. Sometimes, if it’s a contract-based business, it might have two different business lines under the same contract. Well, how do you separate the two in an efficient way and make sure the buyer who’s buying is the portion of the business gets the benefit of those contracts? And so we work through that. Then it ultimately just comes down to, I think, like investment bankers are really helpful for the process. But I love the fact that you said we really need the parties to discuss because what I find a lot of times as the lawyer is I’m telling a client, have you just talked to the buyer directly, or are you only going through your investment banker? Because if you’re only going through the investment banker, you’re building no real credibility and if that’s the case, you’re also using a middleman who has a lot of, like, good information on the transaction but may not know what’s needed for the post closing, like, operational transition. So you really need to, like, actually develop real relationships. And that’s always a big thing. We try to push on. Sometimes, the client isn’t comfortable with it because they think I’ve hired somebody to help. And I really, if I say something that screws it up, well, then I shouldn’t just use my investment banker. And the reality is that the banker is there to help facilitate. If you want to have a pre-conversation on how to message it, that’s huge, but, like, actually getting people in the room to talk about immigration early on is really important. I think.
Mark Miller 42:43
You raise a good point about carve-outs. We’re working on a deal now that the commercial assumptions are 100% dependent upon a third-party manufacturer in the UK, distributors in EMEA and Australia and ensuring that those suppliers are going to come, culturally, financially in the way we’re assuming, is a huge part of the deal. And so the legal diligence and getting to know the relationships that are there are all going to be critical to whether that deal is successful or not from a revenue standpoint.
Andy Wright 43:25
Sounds like an easy deal to get done in this environment. Trey you touched earlier on some of the things that you look for that are gating items when you look at acquisition targets. Is there anything that sell-side advisors, bankers, or other advisors do to make your life easier? That might be a nice way to get you into this conversation, or other things that we can all be mindful of are not helpful.
Trey Fletcher 43:52
I love Brett’s comments because, around the legal side of the Q&B, you can tell when those two parties don’t talk, and it really shows up. And when those narratives are different, that is an immediate flag from a buyer standpoint. Is there something here that I may not know about, or is there something here that I need to look a little bit deeper on? And that starts to flag up for us. A lot of it, and we kind of talked a little bit on this is around the data. So the SIM tells you a lot of stuff, whether or not you’re really kind of, Am I going to be interested or not? But the data side of the equation provides a lot to us around, kind of, how do we think about those next, What is the next, kind of 100 days, one year, two years look like? What do I need to focus on? Where do I need to focus my attention to? We love seeing a lot of that stuff, because there are things where, you know, there’s always warts in every single deal that gets done. It’s about whether or not the data ultimately are there things that we can find that ultimately get us around. So there are some other areas where there might be some, some additional value creation that we may not have seen originally, but we may find in some of the data because we’re looking not just for what are they worth today, We’re really looking at, what can we do? How do we connect by looking at the customer information? So seeing a lot of that type of stuff really helps. We love seeing, and I’m majorly focused now on the kind of the interest rate environment, doing what it’s done over the last probably two years, cash flow management. It’s amazing how many Q and Bs I get a hold of where they’re not doing kind of a full cash flow understanding and kind of providing all of the bank reconciliations that go along with it, and then we do a lot of little deals, and they don’t do that type of stuff, and you find inventory management things of that nature. It’s a lot of little things out there that can really add value or create new questions for us to be able to go through and negotiate with. We’re in a fairly regulated environment, and we want to understand from like, union, non-union, technicians, kind of like, how are you thinking about it? What does your customer profile look like? How much concentration do you have? Inclusive inside of there? How good are you at collecting your AR? Those are the types of things that you start seeing. Like, wow. They really understand the business. They know how to operate their business. They know what the drivers are attached out on the back end. It gives us comfort. How well their systems are built, and things of that nature. Those are areas where really, like those can add value to the conversation and can really help us understand is this somebody who’s going to be able to partner with be able to help us get through our integration strategy, help us really continue to grow? Are they going to be willing to partner and work with the rest of our portfolio? How do they ultimately, all of that come together as part of it? And those are all things that we think about our regular basis as we’re going through it.
Andy Wright 46:32
And Brett, maybe just two more topics we’ll cover here, one of them coming to you. I think everybody probably has the regulatory environment top of mind right now. Any perspectives you could share about what to expect going forward here?
Brett Hubler 46:47
So there’s two different areas, right? Not two different but two different levels of regulations. There’s federal, and there’s state. Federal gets all the headlines. Everybody is worried about antitrust and what the FDC is going to do. And you saw DOJ just told Google they’re going to have to get rid of Chrome. I think big tech is going to be super focused no matter what, the regulators will be focused on that. They’re going to be focused on Pharma. My hope is that the middle market kind of everybody understands that these are where real jobs are created, a lot and, and it’s a dynamic market, so I don’t think there will be quite as much focus. But the only problem with that is, is the current administration has issued new rules around HSR filings, which are basically just the filing that you make after you sign a deal above $100 million enterprise value, and you have to basically declare yourself to the FDC and the DOJ, and they’ve now basically imposed much more information requirements that we’re seeing might add five or six times the amount of man hours to get done. Okay? So typical M&A deal, if there’s a delayed sign in and closing, you’ll say, the purchase agreement will say, you know, within 10 days of signing, we will have filed our HSR. We’re basically telling nobody to agree to that anymore, because the chance of you being able to get that done in 10 days is going to be very difficult. You will need to start doing it before signing, for sure, if you’re going to do that. And the problem is if it’s before signing, there’s a lot of other stuff that’s being completed at the same time. So that’s one area. I think it’s going to create more friction and more cost. Hopefully, that might get pared back a little bit with the new administration, but you just don’t know. And then I mentioned the second level is state level regulation. And you’re seeing state regulators be way more active for political reasons as well as they just view it as their role. The California AG is coming out and going after property managers about overcharging on their customers, like tenant deposits. We see a focus on, like, privacy compliance at the state regulatory level because these are they see the federal government as not taking these actions, so at the state level, it’s really focused on. So we have a whole team at our firm that basically just does stage State Ag practice, and they’re very they’re super busy all the time. So those are two areas that are that you have to focus on. I think with State AG, people don’t think about it as much because it doesn’t get the headlines as much, but it is going to continue to be super active. And it doesn’t, it’s not along political lines. You do tend to see, like the states that are more blue maybe have a little bit more active, but the red states are active too, and they’re but they’re just active on different reasons, or different areas, because, anybody can get behind a lot of consumer protection a lot of times.
Andy Wright 49:41
So we’ll be very interesting to see how that plays out, for sure, it’ll be fun. Ed, last question for you, just market activity and outlook on next year. Would love to get your thoughts on what you’re seeing now, what you expect for next year
Ed Bagdasarian 49:56
You want my crystal ball?
Andy Wright 49:58
Absolutely, absolutely.
Ed Bagdasarian 49:59
It changes everyday.
Andy Wright 50:01
Let’s hear it. We may or we may not hold you to it.
Ed Bagdasarian 50:05
I don’t have a crystal ball, but I can tell you I look at the conditions that either are fruitful and encourage M&A or detract, right? And first of all, the activity level sponsors are starting to think about some companies increasingly. So, the number of pitches is way up for us, and the pipeline is improving. Frankly, a lot of sponsors kept away from going to market because their own portfolio companies were struggling. They were not in the best position to go to market. And so we’ve been talking to sponsors who’ve been telling us the companies are getting better. If they continue improving, we’re going to go to market next year. So I think there’s going to be a lot of opportunities next year, with a lot of new inventory going into the market. So I’m feeling good about next year in terms of the availability of supply, of taking companies to market, also the regulatory conditions with a new administration, you know, we’re probably going into more of a systemic deregulatory, or lesser regulation mode that should help the M&A markets. The interest rate environment is going to help. So, I think all the conditions are right for M&A activity to rebound significantly next year. What you can’t predict are those shocks that may come from left field to create uncertainty, and M&A markets don’t like uncertainty. You have to be able to price risk for acquires to be active. So that’s kind of what I see. But I just wanted to add one thing that we haven’t discussed just really quick if I may. So I do some seminars for Young Presidents Organization, when we discuss with business owners what drives value in businesses. And one thing we didn’t talk about, which is, I think something that Ashton can probably capture in her video clips is, you know, I put a list on a board for business owners of various attributes of a business, and I ask them to rate it from the biggest value drivers to the lowest value drivers. And we have IP, strength management team, profit margins, growth, all of those things. And I bury a little line that says, culture, corporate culture. And nobody guesses that the corporate culture is the biggest value driver or detractor. The reason I bring that up is that it is the hardest attribute to build in a business and is the hardest attribute for a strategy to duplicate. They have to acquire it. And Trey can probably say that if you buy a company whose culture clashes with your culture, you’re going to have a tough time integrating that. And if you buy something with compatible values and culture, it is just a beautiful thing, right? And the reason I’m saying that is that we ask our clients to focus on making the culture come alive in processes highlight that, and that’s when you do a good job articulating what the culture is about. That’s the secret sauce, the DNA that buyers are going to have to pay a lot of money to buy because they can’t duplicate it themselves. Something to keep in mind
Andy Wright 53:07
Well said, Yeah, I think we’ve run out of time to do closing remarks, but maybe I’ll just make one comment, and then we want to open it up for Q and A and answer any questions that the audience has. But as we think about the current state of the M&A market in general, given some recent volatility, uncertainty, as well as the cost of capital being elevated, it has become a little more challenging to get deals done. There is greater scrutiny across the board and due diligence. People are a little bit more skeptical. Their underwriting just requires more scrutiny, right? So, a lot of what we’ve talked about today are ways in which we can all be thoughtful about making sure that certainty is first and foremost in people’s minds. So you’re doing the upfront prep work ahead of going to market, making sure that you’re positioning companies appropriately, and not only are you able to close them, but you’re able to close them for maximum value. So all of that is incredibly important, and people like we have on the panel today are constantly working together to drive value. So thanks again, everybody for your for your time today, we’ll open it up for questions from the audience.
Audience Member #1 54:24
So most of my clients, you know, sell side advisors, kind of doing what Ed does, but we live off the crumbs of Ed and Black Arch here. But so our owners are typically founder-led businesses, family-owned businesses, partner and businesses, they can be reluctant to spend a lot of money upfront. So for anybody on the panel, what have you seen for smaller M&A advisors, what kind of innovative strategies have they used to maybe address some of these issues prior to going to market?
Brett Hubler 54:58
Yeah. Mark, do you want to start with that? And then maybe Ed can chime in to?
Mark Miller 55:03
I’ll go to, Ed I don’t do a ton of sell side prep. .
Ed Bagdasarian 55:09
I mean, look, you got to pick your spots. What third-party advisor do you need, and what kind of report? Then, if you’re going to spend the money in one place, I’d probably put it on the Q of E because the smaller the company, the more likely you’re going to have a challenge in due diligence. There are providers who will do it pretty effectively. I think there’s some you should talk to Daniel sitting there. He’s got a firm that does Q of E’s, and so, yeah, you could, you could find somebody who would do it for an affordable price, and that’s where I would put my money.
Brett Hubler 55:38
I would totally say that, too, because even as a non-accountant, a Q of is so helpful in the big picture. And for most of your buyers, the company that they’re buying, it may or may not be super material to them, you know, as far as size is concerned. So, doing a ton of pre-legal work that just delves everywhere is not going to be effective because any legal issue that comes out of it is probably going to be within a line item the buyer has, right? But what they’re gonna focus on are the financials and how they think they can multiply it. And so I just think, the only thing I ever see if it’s pre-done would be Q of E.
Trey Fletcher 56:17
Yeah, 100% on our side too. So when we see it, I’d much rather you focus your attention on the Q of E, have a really good Q of E that’s kind of dialed in, or there’s not going to be a ton of questions on the back end of that. The cleaner that QB is, the better it is than all the rest of the stuff. If a legal issue does show up, it’s much easier to work through knowing that we’ve got a pretty good Q of E that kind of feels grounded.
Andy Wright 56:45
I would add just two quick points there, Gary. One is, it is nice that there are providers of different price points so you have a good menu to provide to your to your clients. The other thing too is, I think it’s incumbent upon us as advisors sometimes to really take a stand and say, I have seen multiple times in my career where you did not spend money up front, and it cost you what, much more money, sometimes multiples of that money on the back end, right? That’s where you’ve got to have trust with your clients, advise them, and hold your ground. I think, personally.
57:16: Ed said you got to manage all those surprises. There’s always a surprise,
Ashton Belk 57:22
I would say, from a brand perspective too, even just cleaning up the overall narrative too, to make sure that they have a very clear value prop. So even just taking the messaging and being able to dial it in and checkpointing where and how many different voices are out there about that company, and then dial it in and be able to have one solid message that’s going to be able to take you forward. We see very discrepant messaging a lot, and a lot of times, it’s really helpful to be able to dial that in and clarify.
Samantha: 57:02
My name is Samantha. I own a video production and communications agencies. I was curious. Ed earlier, you mentioned that the greatest innovation in 30 years has been Virtual Data rooms. Can you guys speak to some of the changing technology that you’re seeing as part of the deal process? And if you’re not seeing technology changing significantly, what are some of the problems that you’re seeing out there that technology could help address?
Trey Fletcher 58:37
I mean, we’re 47 companies in and we actually have a video production group on the house, so we brought it all internal because we were farming it out. And as we were doing that, we were learning that this is something that we wanted and we needed on a regular basis, we found a ton of value in being able to go back to our national customers, even to some of the regional customers, and really be able to tell our story in the right way. It’s really tough when you’re doing as much as we’re doing to be able to get our management team in front of people, but it’s very easy to have a production that’s readily available to say, Hey, listen, take a look at this. Have a conversation. We can have a conversation afterward. We can do it over different areas. It’s now an environment. I mean, we’re seeing more we’ve got social media people now that we have on staff. We have marketing people that are focused on all types of things, from just kind of like focusing back on the management team to focusing on the industry and what’s happening in the industry. We’ve seen a lot of, kind of more push in that direction because it just helps us get integrated or kind of gets a foothold into a lot of our customers.
Brett Hubler 59:39
We also see, I mean, rep and warranty insurance, people might not think of that as technology, but that is kind of like deal technology in a way that’s changed a lot of negotiation around indemnities and all of that. It has, unfortunately, like, had people relying on advisors a lot more and acting less instinctively. It does kind of take out the ability to make judgment calls because if you haven’t diligenced an issue, it just basically gets excluded from coverage. But that’s one thing on the legal side, where people are trying to figure out what to do with AI and how to analyze some of the information. I think numbers are probably a little bit easier, and that’s further along. Legal will be there eventually. It’s just not there quite yet. You’re never going to replace the individuals with the instinctual and judgment experience, judgment-based experience.
Ed Bagdasarian 1:00:27
Yeah. So we’re starting to invest resources with firms helping us with the AI component when it comes to acquire identification, finding potential acquirers that are not the obvious ones that you’d get from a Capital IQ or a Pitchbook or your own resources or prior processes or your own research. There’s some pretty sophisticated tools that are being developed to access some out-of-the-box potential acquires. That’s why I think a lot of the effort is going to go into AI. Also, gathering information quickly and getting smart in an industry sector would have taken a lot longer to get really, really smart to understand value drivers. That’s where I think a lot of technology money is going to go.
Trey Fletcher 1:01:12
Social media piece also incredibly helps us with hiring in general, from just putting our name out there and being able to find technicians to finding like, just generally, analysts in the environments we’re in, and they’re going more to social media more so than they’ve ever had in the last, or in previous periods. We find a lot of them are actually coming on and going. How did you know about us? And, like, well, I looked you up, and then I started following your social media. And that was very quickly, wow. Okay, they actually are paying attention to what we are doing. What we’re committing back to the community, things of that nature really show up there. ,
Ashton Belk 1:01:46
Yeah, and a lot of times, though, we work with various companies, too, where it’s the employer marketing piece. So you have the company marketing, but you actually have the employer marketing. So you’re telling the stories of everyone who works there and why it’s a great culture. You’re highlighting the culture, and you’re showing videos of culture pieces and culture drivers that are really the game changer to be able to make sure that you’re continuing to develop the right kind of personnel on your team, and then AI, for sure, all aspects of AI, making sure that you’re validating and then also using it as responsibly as possible.
Andy Wright 1:02:20
Bret a great point about rep and warranty insurance, that’s probably the most transformative development over the course of my career. Very nice tool to have in the quiver for sure. Let’s see. We probably have time. Want to keep us on track here, we started a little bit late. Probably have time for one more question? If there is one? Yeah?
Audience Member “Chris”1:02:44
Good morning. My name is Chris. I’m an operator of a private equity-backed platform company. I think it’s interesting. Brett, you talked about Troutman as part of a longer name. Pepper was part of a longer name. And we struggle with acquisitions, and certainly not at the velocity that you’re doing them, Trey, but to keep bolting on these company names, which turn into brands, and if there’s any like unique process that you’ve ever identified to create value, right value creation in the absence of data of what a brand then becomes. We talk about that all the time, and I don’t know that there’s a silver bullet, but you know, picking up guidance.
Brett Hubler 1:03:18
I’ll tell you what all of our marketing team has done. All of our swag now says troutman.com instead of Troutman Pepper and Troutman Pepper Lord. So maybe they’re kind of slowly phasing it, maintain brand and eventually, like, keep it, and I’ll just be Troutman. But it’s hard managing that. It’s like, I don’t know what to do, and I don’t get hired for it, definitely Ashton’s role.
Ashton Belk 1:03:36
Sure. So, a lot of times, we’re looking at evaluating which companies host the most brand equity and be able to pull from it. So you’re looking at, okay, so you have, you know, company A, Company B, and Company C, and which one provides what for each other? How can you either combine the names in order to be able to keep the equity of all of them? Or looking at what you can roll in, because it actually doesn’t matter, but making sure that you’re doing it in a span of time that makes sense to be able to inform also creating the narrative behind it, to let customers know don’t have any surprises for your customers, any of your current employees. Make sure they have the retention of the employees when a new acquisition gets bolted on, too, because they could be worried that they’re going to lose their jobs. So keeping messaging at the core and then making sure that the rollout and the combination of the two with a new brand story attached to it, as to the why, has proven to be beneficial.
Ed Bagdasarian 1:04:36
Or you could do, I want to tell you an old man’s story. About 20 years ago, we had one of these ACG events, and people were asking edge private equity representatives to come up and say why they’re so different and special than everybody else. And one guy stands up and says, We’re different from everybody else. We overpay, and we do no due diligence. And everybody wanted to sell to that guy. So you may want to use that line to be attractive, too.
Andy Wright 1:05:03
All right, well, thanks again To all of our panelists, really.