The decision before the deal.
M&A and strategic advisory for healthcare and care businesses in Australia. We help owners sell, help acquirers buy, and stay on afterwards to make sure the deal does what it was meant to.
Or see how a buyer is likely to look at your business, in five minutes.
WHY AN ADVISER
Why owners use an adviser
Most owners sell a business once. The people buying it may have bought ten, and they know which questions move the price and when to ask them. An adviser closes that gap by working for one side of the sale and only that side.
For an owner, that means getting the business ready before buyers look at it, finding the buyers most likely to pay well for what it is, running the conversations so those buyers compete with each other rather than negotiate against you, and managing the months between agreeing a price and the day the money arrives. Your accountant checks the numbers and your lawyer drafts the contracts. We run the sale around them.
Owners can sell without an adviser, and some do. The difference an adviser makes is mostly in who sets the terms, and how much of the agreed price is still there at completion.
BEFORE A SALE
What buyers look at sets the price
Buyers form a view of what a business is worth early, from the first financial and operating information they see and their first meeting with the owner. They spend the rest of the process testing that view, and a price is much easier to push down from there than up. So the work that does the most for an owner happens before any buyer is involved: showing what the business really earns once one-off and personal costs are taken out, having registrations and audits in order, and being able to show it runs without the owner in the room every day. We do that work first, and then we run the sale.
We act for owners and boards of mid-sized care businesses, both founder-led and not-for-profit, and for acquirers buying into the sector. On any deal we act for one side only, so you always know whose interests we represent. We have run care businesses as well as bought them, so we tend to see a business the way both sides of the table will.
BEFORE YOU DECIDE
Not ready to sell yet?
Many owners first talk to us one to three years before they want to sell, which is about the right time. Some of what a buyer looks at takes a month or two to fix, and some, like how much the business depends on you, takes a year or more. The exit readiness review sets out which is which for your business.
WHAT WE DO
Three areas of work
Sell-side
Selling a business usually happens in two stages. A buyer first agrees a price in principle, then spends two or three months checking the business before anything is signed. That second stage is where prices tend to slip, because whatever the buyer finds becomes a reason to lower the price or pay part of it later. We prepare the business so there is less to find, bring in several buyers so you have alternatives, and hold the agreed terms through to completion.
Buy-side
For an acquirer, the hard part is usually finding the right business rather than paying for it. Many of the best care businesses are never advertised for sale. We find the ones that fit, including those that aren't on the market, check them properly, and make the approach in a way an owner who wasn't planning to sell is willing to hear.
Integration
Completion is the day the business changes hands. Whether the deal works is decided over the 90 days or so after that, as staff, clients and systems move across and everyone finds out whether what was promised during the sale holds up. We plan integration while the deal is still being negotiated, and stay on to see it through.
WHERE WE WORK
The sectors we work in
Aged and home care. Buyers want to know whether your clients and staff will still be there after the sale, because that is what the revenue depends on. If you sell the business's assets rather than the company, your clients can only move to a buyer that is already registered, which narrows the field.
Disability and community support. NDIS registration belongs to one ABN and can't be transferred. Sell the company and the registration comes with it. Sell only the assets and the buyer needs its own registration, and every participant has to choose to move across. That choice shapes the structure, the timetable and the price.
Nursing and clinical services. Buyers separate work that will keep coming, such as contracted nursing services, from agency placements that grew during the staffing shortages and that governments are now working to contain. They pay much more for the first kind.
Allied health. Most of the value sits with the clinicians and the referrers who send them patients, and clinicians can leave. So a large part of any deal is about keeping them: how much of the price is paid later, whether they share in the new business, and what restraints apply.
Start with a conversation
Most of what decides the outcome of a sale is settled before the first buyer sees the business: the structure, the timing, who gets approached and in what order. A first conversation is confidential and commits you to nothing, and it's the point where those choices are still open.