Situation
A regional distributor of bovine animal health products led its markets in revenue and share, but the company had struggled to maintain profitability throughout a lengthy hold period with substantial leadership turnover. The company's private equity owners hired a new CEO and engaged Candela to conduct an end-to-end assessment of commercial operations to identify opportunities to boost profit and increase enterprise value.
Candela's Role
Our team conducted an in-depth profitability diagnostic to uncover opportunities to quickly and sustainably increase EBITDA. We interviewed company executives; reviewed and pressure-tested the existing growth strategy; and conducted a thorough, data-driven analysis of commercial operations -- including pricing, customer and channel profitability, sales coverage and performance, marketing activity, and organizational structure. As a result, we identified six major areas of opportunity with the potential to add $9M of EBITDA within three years. We then designed and launched a program to implement the most critical recommendations.
Impact
Within one year of engaging Candela, the client implemented a new pricing strategy and discounting controls, shifted its product mix toward more profitable categories, improved key account management, and substantially reduced shipping and transaction processing expenses. In total, the program delivered a 300% improvement in EBITDA while maintaining revenue growth, providing the cash needed to compensate and retain employees while creating a path to profitable exit for the company's owners. The project added enterprise value equal to approximately 70x Candela's fees.