Case 4: Agriculture Post-Acquisition Strategy
Our Transformation-from-Within© approach helped a private equity client develop a 5-year growth strategy for a recent acquisition to enable a timely exit at the desired multiple
Situation
A PE client needed to support the new leadership team of one it’s portfolio companies in developing a 5-year growth strategy that captured the opportunities made possible by a recent acquisition, and enabled the PE client to exit on schedule and at desired multiples.
After successfully helping the client vertically integrate a regional distributor with a global horticulture firm in their portfolio, the client retained us again to guide the new leadership team in developing a 5-year growth strategy that captured the opportunities made possible by the acquisition, and enabled the private equity firm to exit on schedule and at desired multiples.
Read more about the initial project here.
Challenge
Some of the original assumptions in the acquisition business case could not be realized. As such, the board and PE investors were looking for an alternative strategy that would still achieve the same financial returns despite the new obstacles.
Given the sensitivity of the integration and the need to keep both firms commercially independent, some of the original assumptions in the acquisition business case could not be realized. As such, the board of directors and the private equity investors were looking for alternative strategies that would still achieve the same financial returns without breaking through the barriers to independence created by the integration strategy.
Given that the combined leadership team was new at working together, and unfamiliar with each other’s business dynamics, the client retained us to help guide them through the challenging process of finding a way to overcome the current obstacles and re-draft a 5-year strategic plan to ensure that the acquisition goals and targets were met.
Action
We used our Transformation-from-Within© approach, applied through a series of facilitated workshops, to guide the new leadership team through a comprehensive strategic planning exercise.
We used our Transformation-from-Within© approach, applied through a series of facilitated workshops, to guide the new leadership team through a comprehensive strategic planning exercise.
To prepare for the workshops, we coached the sales and finance teams of both companies through aggregating and analysing sales and distribution data, and ran multiple scenarios to identify alternative paths to deliver against the original business case.
There was then a facilitated discussion of the scenario analysis during the workshops to help the leadership team align on the best way forward. Once the path was selected, we led additional workshops to guide the leadership team through developing a detailed 5-year growth strategy, along with the accompanying operational plans, action plans, targets, KPIs and scorecards.
Results
Company is positioned to doubled sales and distribution, enabling the PE client to exit on time and at the desired multiple.
The new strategy was fully endorsed by the board, and is currently being executed. The vertically integrated company is positioned to doubled its sales and distribution capabilities, enabling the private equity client to exit on time and at the desired multiple.