ENVIROCLEAR SEES EBITDA DOUBLE WITH EMC’S SUPPORT

EMC’s Growth Team, led by Kevin Wheelhouse, has worked with Enviroclear to double the EBITDA over a 24 month period.

Enviroclear Site Services Limited (“Enviroclear”) is a full service waste management company based in Wrexham. Founded in 2004, the owners first approached EMC to provide corporate finance advice. During the process the Directors realised that their valuation expectations would not be met and so turned to our Growth Team to support them in transforming the Company into a valuable and desirable asset.

Enviroclear had grown steadily by about 5% per year to reach £7m, but like many owner managed businesses struggled with resources and capital. The company had a good reputation and it had a significant number of blue chip clients who valued the levels of service and competencies that the company possessed. Competitors often used Enviroclear to meet their own contracts and several national waste management companies would regularly subcontract work to the company.

The problem:

The business had five divisions with each being run by a Director. Whilst the collective divisions enable the business to provide a total solutions, the reality was somewhat different and, importantly, each division had widely differing profitability with lesser performing areas taking up valuable management time and resource as well as much needed capital.

EMC’s engagement:

The Growth Team, led by EMC’s Kevin Wheelhouse, was initially engaged to carry out a Business Review. Carried out over the course of a month, the review determined that:

• the largest division operated in a highly competitive sector with huge downward price pressure and low margins;
• two divisions had not reached critical mass to be profitable; and
• two divisions were in sectors where in less competitive growing markets with strong margins ripe for the picking.

Not being a consultancy to just identify problems EMC worked with the management team to develop a detailed growth plan to increase sales and EBITDA over a twenty four month period to get to an annualised turnover of £10m and an EBITDA of 15% of turnover.

Importantly, EMC quickly identified that to achieve the targets Enviroclear would have to keep all five divisions. All were needed to support the full service model, without one, clients would not be retained. But by redirecting focus and particularly financial support from the largest into the higher growth markets and accelerating the growth on the two nascent ones the business would become both more profitable and more valuable. The plan called for the largest division to focus new business in areas that supported the others, avoiding the highly competitive tendering which diverted key resources for relatively low returns.

Finally, and unlike many, EMC like to “walk-the-walk” and so continued the engagement supporting and augmenting the management team to enact the plan.

The result:

In the first twelve months the focus on driving sales resulted in an increase in turnover of 20%, which continued into the second year. Sales are now £13m and the Company achieves an excellent EBITDA ratio of 15% on sales.

Neil Short, Director Enviroclear said “this process gave us the opportunity to grow the business in a way we always knew it could“

Kevin Wheelhouse continued “Working with the Team at Enviroclear has been very rewarding, seeing how the Team and business have grown and demonstrates the positive impact of having an outside view, which has probably never been more relevant than today”.

EMC continues to be involved with the business. We have helped develop management information and reporting and support the Directors in building and developing a wider management team needed for a business that has grown by almost 100% in two years.

Having a clear understanding of your business, creating a properly articulated strategy and setting business goals to measure performance against will ensure that your business not only survives but thrives, this has never been more important than in the current economic climate.

Enviroclear is one of many company’s helped by EMC over the years – could You be next?

If you believe that your business would benefit from and experienced external review then please contact us for a confidential, non-obligatory discussion to find out how we can help you.