Odyssey was approached by a privately owned food and beverage company

Its management shareholders had developed from start-up a new beverage brand and established its own distribution network. The management team had developed the brand sufficiently to demonstrate its market potential but needed capital and some additional skills to take the product line into the large grocery market. Recognising that their skill-set was in innovation and early stage development, they made the decision to look for a buyer of the brand

Odyssey role

Odyssey acted as lead manager on the confidential sales process of the business, including

• Preparation of an initial pricing parameters paper providing Odyssey’s perspective on what consideration may be achieved based on a DCF of management’s financial projections and other known brand sales locally
• Preparation of an Information Memorandum, being the principle sales document presented to prospective purchasers – providing the necessary information for them to make an offer for the business
• Managing all the dealings with the prospective buyers, through the offer and negotiation stage, heads of agreement with the preferred purchaser and the subsequent due diligence and legal contracts phase

Odyssey value-add

During the initial marketing phase it became clear that the brand was not sufficiently well established to gain the interest of many of the large international food and beverage companies – who prefer to acquire brands with market leading positions

As a further challenge, certain regulatory issues became apparent during the due diligence phase which provided additional uncertainty about the brands longer term prospects and the possible need to remove or at least re-formulate some of the product range

Odyssey’s typical sale process focuses time and attention upfront on identifying potential issues early, so that a solution can be found and/or so that the issue can be presented in the best light to interested parties. If the issue is raised later in the process, as it did in this case, it inevitably causes a delay in the process and often results in a price reduction or worse, a loss of interest from potential buyers

Odyssey’s value-add in this deal, was the extended marketing campaign that it ran, beyond the client’s list of probable buyers, obtaining a good initial offer for the business and then working hard to minimise the substantial price reduction that the buyer was seeking after its due diligence discovery