Businesses for Sale (Mandated) Construction/Building Services

General Builder

Location: North West

Privately-owned and long-established general contractor specializing in education, health and social housing. All its business is of a repeat nature and they serve the end-client directly. It carries out new build, refurbishment and maintenance via its own directly-employed tradesmen. Healthy order book. Profitably turns over £9M, but cash flow and balance sheet are weak. Business is offered for sale at a discount to Net Worth. Sale due to planned retirement of owner-manager who will remain on medium-term. UNDER OFFER

Mechanical Services Contractor

Location: North West

A long-established firm which is recognized as the market leader in its local area, it also serves the North West region generally. Customers are both public and private sector, and strong relationships mean substantial repeat business. Some of its business is directly with the end user. Profitably turns over £4M. Sale due to retirement. Price £2M. SOLD

Maintenance of Building Utilities

Location: East

A building services M&E maintenance business is for sale which carries out both planned and response maintenance on 3-year term contracts. It does maintenance only and no projects. It specialises in delivering maintenance services but also in helping clients manage their building utilities better than competitors. It achieves this via their own proprietary management systems. Externally, they deploy electronic interfaces which are better than anything else on the market, and internally the company has developed a unique management model which achieves high productivity at low cost. These mean high profitability. It serves the commercial building sector and particularly those who require high availability/uptime on their utilities. It focuses on directly serving end-users who have multi-site operations. Once won, it keeps its customers and term contracts are re-won upon expiry. Most sales growth comes from displacing larger competitors and winning an increasing share of existing customers’ national business. This has the downside of absorbing most of the company’s organic growth resource and slowing its capacity to acquire large new customers and increased customer diversity. The business grows organically at 20% - 25% per annum. In 2008 sales were £3M with a normalised PBT of £375K. 2009 is forecast to turn over close to £4M with a PBT close to £0.5M. The business has a good management team that can handle a bigger organisation. The directors believe the company’s product and services are good enough to justify a much larger share of the national building utilities market with sales and profits many times its current level. They want a growth rate much higher than its current 25% per annum and to achieve this and also greater customer diversity quickly, a majority shareholding is offered to a buyer with whom there would be good synergies such as cross-selling. The total shareholding is currently valued at a premium of £1.5M to Net Worth.

Consultant Engineering Practice

Location: North

A long-established consultancy practice which is one of the regional leaders in chartered civil and structural engineering is for sale due to planned retirement. It focuses on commercial, infrastructural and residential projects, and has a leading position in urban renewal, marine and leisure. It also has a useful position in some niche environmental markets. Most of its business is of a repeat nature, deriving from framework or partnering agreements with architects, developers and major contractors. It makes above-average margins on a typical fee income of £1.5M. Despite the recession, its forward order book is strong at £2M. It operates from 2 offices with a good management organization and strong succession planning. Asking Price £1M.

Landscaping Contractor

Location: South East

Well-established landscaper specializing in sports-related projects. It focuses on the construction of golf courses, sportsgrounds, and also maintenance of sports surfaces plus hard and soft landscaping projects in the commercial and public sectors. Significant element of repeat business. Profitably turns over £1.6M per annum. Sale due to planned retirement of owner-manager. Asking price is £0.55M including a balance sheet complete with all working assets including good plant and a substantial cash surplus of circa £0.15M.

Building Services Contractor
Location: South West

An M&E business which both contracts and consults and which is strong in Design and Build. It is widely regarded as one of the Top Ten independent M&E firms in the UK and has a big reputation for delivering quality. It has framework or partnering agreements with a number of nationwide clients and all of its business is repeat. It is a market leader in the leisure sector but displays good client and market diversity having a significant presence in commercial and industrial too. Growing steadily over the years it has a full order book and strong prospects for continued growth. It has a well-developed management system and team with good succession planning. It turns over £15M and makes margins which are well above industry-average. Price £14M SOLD

Historical Building Restoration
Location: South London

A specialist builder which restores and maintains the exteriors of historical buildings is for sale. Its primary skill base is stone masonry and it occupies a UK market niche Clients include churches, schools, listed public and private buildings, ancient monuments and trusts such as English Heritage. Its business is mainly repeat and its reputation means it easily achieves the sales levels this lifestyle business requires without marketing. Turnover averages circa £0.6M and it achieves a high return on capital with relatively low risk. There is opportunity to increase turnover. Cash flow is strong and working capital requirements are low. The Asking Price for the business with sustainable profits of circa £165K per annum after management costs is £500K excluding surplus cash. This business complements that summarized immediately below (‘Niche Restoration…’) and both businesses could rationally be bought by a single purchaser as there are good marketing and operational synergies. The combination would be £1.7M turnover with above-average profits.

Niche Restoration/Refurbishment Builder

Location: Sussex

A building and decorating contractor based in Sussex is for sale due to retirement. Most of its business is of a repeat nature, and all of it derives from its reputation which means it achieves all its sales without any marketing support. It has a strong local market position which enables it to achieve margins and payment terms that are better than average, and also to win work with a low creditor risk and strong cash flow, which in turn means it has a low working capital requirement. It serves a niche sector mainly within the domestic market with a strong emphasis on the restoration and refurbishment of older buildings. It is recession-resilient and currently turns over £1M with a normalised net PBT of £100K per annum after allowing full management costs. The Asking Price is £450K for a balance sheet which includes much surplus cash. The owner-director who works part-time will withdraw following a suitable handover, but a day-to-day management team will remain in place. This business complements that summarized immediately above (‘Historical Restoration…’) and both businesses could rationally be bought by a single purchaser as there are good marketing and operational synergies. The combination would be £1.7M turnover with above-average profits.

Painter Decorator
Location: London

A long-established painting and decorating business is for sale due to retirement. All its business derives from its strong reputation. No marketing is required and most business is repeat. Its market is diverse. It makes strong margins and requires little working capital. The Asking Price for a business making a sustainable net profit of £0.27M per annum along with a freehold of value £0.4M is £1.15M total.

Dorset Builder

Family-owned firm established 2 generations providing refurbishment and new build to the public and private sectors. Operates as a main contractor delivering contracts up to £0.5M value to local clients in the schools, hospitals, infrastructure and residential sectors. Small works and maintenance is also undertaken. Business is largely of a repeat nature. Turnover circa £1. 5M on which gross margins are about 20%, net margins about 3%. Sale is due to planned withdrawal by shareholders from contracting to focus on their separate plant hire activities. The outgoing director will need to be replaced by purchaser. Price £100K for a profitable business with a debt-free balance sheet and an order book. SOLD

Electrical Contractor

Location: Essex

A building services business concentrating on electrical maintenance is for sale. It provides mainly planned maintenance directly to clients via term contracts. It also provides electrical installation services. There is strong potential to increase sales from within the existing client base. All of its business is of a repeat nature either through term contracts or framework agreements with clients mainly in the commercial sector. It will turn over circa £1.5M this year and has gross margins averaging circa 40%. The Asking Price for a balance sheet with a Net Worth of circa £0.4M is £0.75M. ON HOLD

Building Maintenance:

Location: London

Builder specialising in refurbishment and maintenance, it is strongly service-oriented and recession-resilient. It carries out both response and planned maintenance for the insurance repairs and commercial and social housing sectors. Maintenance-based activity accounts for about £2M turnover. It also carries out building and refurbishment projects for private clients in the property, utility and commercial sectors, and also for some public sector clients. Business is mainly repeat. A management team will remain in place post sale. It is profitably turning over £4.5M . Asking Price £1M

Housebuilder and Property Developer

Location: Bulgaria

This has recently established itself as the largest housebuilder in the country. It has a freehold landbank of 144 plots with full planning permission which are part-built and is well advanced in finalising purchase of several hundred more plots. Current market valuation of the 144 plots is 7M Euro. The buildout cost to complete is 9M Euro, and the sale value at current prices is 32M, giving a development profit uplift on these alone of 16M Euro. The product is detached private housing in the Sofia suburbs and the market is the Bulgarian corporate and private market plus some UK buy-to-let investors. Demand exceeds supply and the sales allocation queue is full with strong prospects for more sales. Due to illness the business is without a managing director and the UK shareholders have not been able to suitably replace him. They also want to realise some value from the development which until now has been financed only by their private funds. Commercial financing is available locally but now the shareholders want to invite new investors and management. The assets of the business, which has a booked value of 4.6M Euro, are offered for sale either in whole or in part or on a property-only basis. Alternatively, a joint venture is sought along with management and finance. The vendors are willing to share the accumulated gain and goodwill in order to motivate a sound deal, and they are flexible about its nature and phasing.

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