This is Part 2 in a two-part series about a recent M&A deal in which PE firm Broadtree Partners purchased SAAS company, RedCAT Systems, which provides specialized HR services for major corporations like Uber, NYSE, and LinkedIn.
This time we’ll be covering the Buyer’s side of the transaction with Rob Joyce from Broadtree. (Be sure to check out my conversation with Steven Epstein of RedCAT here.)
Importantly, Representations and Warranty insurance was a crucial part of this deal. Broadtree wasn’t too thrilled about having this coverage in place at first, but, as Rob notes in our conversation, they did eventually come on board.
We talk about the initial reluctance to get R&W insurance… what changed their mind… and how this coverage changed the dynamics of the deal dramatically, as well as…
- How the due diligence process was delayed because of two key factors (this is something unique to this size of company and industry)
- The total cost of Rep and Warranty coverage – how it breaks down and who pays for it
- Why they saw RedCAT as a worthwhile acquisition (great clues for startups here)
- The sticking points that delayed the deal along the way – and how they could have been avoided
- And more
Listen now…
Mentioned in this episode:
Transcript
Patrick Stroth: Hello there. I’m Patrick Stroth. Welcome to M&A Masters where I speak with the leading experts in mergers and acquisitions. And we’re all about one thing here, a clean exit for owners, founders and their investors.
Today is the second of a two-part series where we’re looking at a case where an m&a deal was insured by record warranty. This time from the buyer’s perspective. Broad tree partners are a financial buyer which purchased a Colorado, Colorado-based SAAS company by the name of red cap systems. In this I’ll have Rob joys of broad tree partners, discuss his perspective and you’re going to note that, at first he was not too thrilled about going after rep a warranty but to accommodate the seller, he agreed to move forward with us And he went through a transition going from being aware of record warranty as a concept to becoming a tool that he is going to use on a go-forward basis quite a bit like an experience that we have all too often here at Rubicon where a majority of our clients are first time users even though they may have heard of record warranty. They had yet to use it and their experience changed their opinion dramatically. The other issue I want to highlight here and be aware of is that this is a lower middle market company with a transaction value under 30 million that did not have audited financials, which would have made it ineligible in 2018 to get record warranty. However, now with the market, the way it is in 2019, not only was a solution available, it came in at the right price and also provided all the same benefits. That billion-dollar transaction gets to enjoy so now have a listen and enjoy Rob Joyce.
Welcome. I’m here with Rob Joyce, who’s a director over at Broadtree Partners. Rob, thanks for joining me today. Now tell us about brought three partners. And then we’ll get into the context of how you came to this point in your career, but give us a profile on Broadtree.
Who Is Rob Joyce, and What Is Broadtree?
Rob Joyce: Yeah, so Broadtree Partners is a lower middle-market private equity fund, and maybe a good way to think about them is they are what I refer to as a search fund incubator. And what that means is as opposed to necessarily looking and acting like a search fund, they act as a private equity fund in almost all aspects with kind of one unique focus, which is at Broadtree.
Many of the executives are operating partners. And the intention is for these operating partners, to be deployed in the businesses after the acquisition and what means as broad trees focus is not only deploying dollars into new businesses make acquisitions, but also deploying people. And we view that as part of the way that that will help growth inside the acquired portfolio companies.
Patrick Stroth: I think that’s a really important differentiator from other investors out there who are blind, you know, contributing capital, and maybe a little advice here and there. But you’ve got operating partners that have seen businesses through the entire lifecycle, from established growth into the next transition and beyond. And I think that kind of knowledge and experience is sorely lacking, particularly from owners and founders who have only had one life cycle they’re dealing with, and that’s just the one they have.
So that’s a great additional feature you guys are bringing.
Rob Joyce: I think it’s something that is a real value add in the lower middle market, is I think one of the things that companies need to grow here, not just as capital, but oftentimes from a resource. constraint in terms of personnel, these companies are resource-constrained. And it is difficult and expensive to hire executives that can make a difference in your team. And for a lot of people, especially they haven’t done it, this can be something that’s a pretty scary thing to do. And I think this is a great way to make a large impact in these businesses is not only to deploy capital but to deploy resources as well and full time dedicated resources, whose objective is to grow the business.
Patrick: Give us some context on you. How did you come to Broadtree, how did you get to this point in your career?
Rob: Yeah, so a little bit of background on myself is for a number of years. I did M&A mainly focused on doing integrations with a little bit of carve out work. I did that for about eight years. And then after that, I transitioned and I, you know, went back to business school, and had some experience with private equity and venture capital. And what led me to read cat was I knew I wanted to stick in primary investing. And one of the things to me that was important was as opposed to just deploying dollars, which is, you know, what we talked about a second ago when I was really looking to do was also individually to be able to build something and to be someone who is helping to actually dictate the change and create the change and create growth as opposed to just deploying and stewarding dollars are and you know, investments. And Redcat, sorry, and Broadtree, you know, offered me that ability.
Patrick: And were you and I came in, came into the picture together was when Broadtree and you were pursuing the acquisition of RedCAT, which is a SAAS company based in Colorado. What led you to that particular investment? What was it about RedCAT that attracted you?
Why RedCAT?
Rob: Yeah, so outside of any sort of investment thesis that existed in the area, specifically about RedCAT, what was so interesting was the work that the existing the management team, which consists of the two co-founders have managed to build to this company over kind of its fairly long life. And the kind of proof is in the pudding in the really impressive customer base that the company had as well as the fact that they were really filling a hole that seems to exist in the marketplace. But a lot of it was really a combination of the product as well as the people who are going to be part of the team that’s really what made the difference.
Patrick: So if you can walk me through the process just overview real quick. You meet with them their synergies, there’s a connection. You decide to move forward to design the letter of intent. How did the process Go for you from that date, how long of a time are we talking about? And then just, you know, it’s not it’s a lower middle market company, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be quick. And there’s not a lot to look at.
Rob: Yes, this process was certainly not quick, I would say this is on the length and if not on the far end of long for these processes for a lower middle market company in terms of time. So, there’s diligence, that obviously needs to be performed, you know, small businesses, in companies in the lower middle market in general. So sometimes can be more difficult to your point. You know, sometimes they’re easy because there’s not a whole lot to look at, but sometimes they can be difficult because they also don’t necessarily hold their data or information or are and ways you’re used to looking at for larger companies. And part of it is either lack of sophistication or lack of resources to do it and ultimately lack of resources can also play a real role and how long diligence takes to know if your company has hired if your target rather is hired, you know an investment banker or has an advisor who is actively pushing it into a sale or pushing into an auction process that will be more well defined.
Now, if you are a company that is not the norm if you’re looking at companies, now, the normal process this may or may not take longer and with RedCAT, one of the interesting things as you know, the founders are also busy running a business during this time. So, you know, acquisition or in their case of sale is a significant amount of effort. And they had to juggle that while also simultaneously continuing to grow their business. So so the process took a while but the kind of key points where there’s obviously for Due diligence, lower middle market companies will tend to have different quality of financials. And you know, which you might expect for a company that’s 10 times the size.
The next area is obviously tech diligence, because this is a software company, as you mentioned, Patrick, and it’s having someone kind of go through and perform technical diligence and kind of understand feedback on the development process and code base, and everything else like that. And then one of the things that it also comes down to is, you know, once you’ve gone through the kind of some of these key diligence items and spoken with customers is you still have to find a deal. One of the things that pushed us past one of our sticking points in this deal was, frankly, the use of rep and warranty insurance. It was a large concern on the part of one of the sellers that we were able to satisfy by using warranty insurance and it’s part of the reason why our dealership is cross the finish line.
Patrick: Well, the concern with that partner was out there and can happen had you use rep and warranty before I always your initial reaction to it, ultimately we went forward with it. But tell me about your reaction if this was your first time if not, give me a few your feelings on the concept of rep and warranty.
Rob: Yeah, so this is the first deal I’ve executed with rep and warranty insurance as part of process it’s, you know, it’s been brought up and I kind of gone through bidding as well as diligence with this being understood, but I’d never gone all the way across the finish line and that is, I think, a noticeably different discussion when you’re actually going through and executing rep and warrants even when you’re saying you know, roughly how much does it cost to get something that looks like this. And you know, Paul, parking is doing forth in the real world. So that was, that’s kind of my background with rep and warranty. For me, I was in an interesting place because as the buyer for this particular deal, at this particular size, I did not have the concerns that one of the sellers did. And so this was really used on my end primarily as a tool to help the seller one of the sellers become comfortable with the transaction and part of that was based on their prior experience. And not necessarily even with M&A, but with lawsuits and things from a corporate perspective is, is they saw this as a potential area of risk and this person was very concerned very, very, very concerned about this. And rep and warranty insurance pretty much quickly mitigated the issue.
And this was something that could have really, really been time intensive if we had not used this solution and I and it could have derailed the deal.
Patrick: It was more of accommodation on your part. And in part of this, and this is one of those common questions I get is OK, if there’s policy here, you the buyer, or the or the policyholder, because if you suffer the loss, the insurance carrier comes to you and pays you your loss rather than requiring you to go pursue the seller on them and then find the seller so it’s more of a direct line. And the question I get all the time is okay, well, if the buyer is the policyholder then who pays for and it varies from deal to deal and it can be one of three ways either the buyer pays for it. The seller pays for or the two sides split it and you were willing to accommodate them and move forward on this and they stepped in and funded the cost.
Rob: Yeah, I think that’s an important thing to note is, like you said, there’s a lot of options here about where, who pays for what in this process. And I think part of the different factor for this deal, in particular, is that this was not a concern that I had, as the buyer, the policy, the concerns that were brought up, were not one that I reflect that what I reflected was, from my perspective, or something I was concerned about. And so, you know, that’s, that’s part of the reason why it ended up that way. Now. Now, I know through our earlier conversations and through, you know, having spoken to some of my other past and present colleagues, is there are other cases where the answers on the opposite side of table where this is primarily a buyer concern, and that there are some real concerns and that the warranty insurance is there to really protect the buyer. Interestingly enough here, it is a buy-side policy, but it’s primarily meeting the needs. And not primarily, I mean, it really is there to meet the needs of the sellers.
So I think that’s an interesting way to look at it. And, you know, I think if we’re being transparent about to regardless of whose needs its meeting, that’s not necessarily with to who funds the policy, you know, negotiating point like everything else in a deal.
Patrick: Absolutely. So as you go through this experience, you had your first rep and warranty policy, any experiences you can share good, bad, indifferent, anything surprise you?
Experience With Rep & Warranty
Rob: Yeah, one of the things that surprised me frankly was the variation in responses you get from talking with different brokers about rep and warranty insurance, everything from you’ll hear some people ballpark mentioned it’s not even possible to get rep and warranty insurance on a lot of these lower middle-market deals. which I know is something you and I extensively talked about that that’s, you know, just not the case anymore. You’ll get that response. You’ll get responses that have differing amounts of, you know, cost, as well as coverage. And you and I working together. I know you kind of already know where I’m going to go with this. But I was blown away by the coverage options that we got working, working with you because they were far above and beyond not only what I expected, but having spoken with my counsel who does an extraordinary number of these lower middle-market deals, as well as some other people who are in this market is no one expected to get this word average. We got them still.
Patrick: Yeah, that’s one of the big developments, which is why I wanted us to talk about this particular deal is that traditionally, rep and warranty was reserved for the hundred million dollar plus transactions they had in the last couple of years come from 100 million. down to $50 million as a threshold. The product now due to a number of competitors coming into the marketplace are now able to ensure deals with transaction values below $20 million. And the other item that was the big change is underwriters do not like ensuring more than 30% of the deals transaction value. Now mostly in Germany counts we’ve seen out there then between 10 and 20%. There are the outliers but it’s usually between 10 and 20% of the transaction value.
So the insurance carrier’s comfort level of 30% or less was rarely breached. But when you get these sub $20 million deals, and you’ve got parties out there that want to ensure up to the entire transaction value. That’s a real change but that is now available where we are now getting involved with transactions we’re ensuring 75 to 100% of the traders that So that is the new development that’s out there. Now, how likely we got this through successfully at there were a lot more applications for it and options that you expected? How likely are you to use it again on another deal?
Rob: I would say that the first step in that is this is immediately now part of my toolkit before it was kind of reactionary. On the only previous times prior to this deal, that revenue, I’d really looked at revenue mortgage insurance, and like you mentioned part, it’s the market I’m working in, in the deal size, you know, this was something that kind of I only looked at based on seller requirements, you know, they really should be happy to have this, you know, give a banker or someone else who basically says this is you know, you must include this, I kind of used it under those circumstances only, I would say now, this is an immediate part of my toolkit, one that can allow some risk mitigation on my side if I feel the need and too, I think it’s also a great tool to help overcome some buyer discomfort, as they’re worried about any sort of risks to the deal. things that can happen, that rapid warranty insurance can cover. This is exactly the tool to use that.
Once again, it’s everything is about the cost. So, it depends on you know, whether or not you need it, how comfortable you are. I will say for me personally, I would not hesitate to use it again, as a tool to help overcome buyer objections or to make them feel comfortable or in some cases where I do feel there’s a risk here to protect myself from the risk.
Patrick: I think it’s a great tool that can be deployed strategically just wear it particularly if you’re in the position as a buyer. You can offer terms that letter of intent with the seller where you say, here you go, we were looking at traditionally there is an escrow or there’s a withhold, and here are some of the risks we’re going to look at if you will so here’s another option where we don’t have to have as big an escrow or any escrow we can ensure the deal is about this is about the cost of it and seller, which would you prefer, you know, having the funds in escrow or unlocking the funds is just going to cost a little bit more, we’ve got a ballpark for you.
And I would think more often than not the seller is going to jump in at getting insurance. Ideally, you’ll get over once they see the cause they get a custom to the cost is the peace of mind and the lack of worry of a lot of these risks as the process goes on, particularly as they go through the whole diligence process with you.
Rob: I think you nailed the one thing that I probably didn’t highlight well enough in my response, which is, this is also a way like you mentioned to differentiate your bid because it does allow you to minimize dollars in escrow. And from my experience, at least that is something that sellers actively look at it’s not just How much money is you know when under what conditions they get it. And I do think this is a way when you are bidding with a company or structuring an LLI or whatever your process is, this is a way to differentiate yourself. And I think that is invaluable outside of the risk mitigation factor. Simply unlocking the cash for the sellers is a very important thing to note.
Patrick: I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Rob: Thank you very much.
Patrick: Now, Rob, you’ve with RedCAT, which we closed a few months ago, you’ve gone through by now your first board meeting with them, how are things going with them?
Rob: Things are going well, working with the sellers, we’ve been visiting some customers, we’ve acquired some new customers as well during this time and we are getting ready to make a big hire to continue to push growth. So things are going well and everyone is excited about working to kind of take RedCAT towards the next level.
Patrick: Well, I know you’re busy, a success brings on more and more Success for you. And I know that you’ve got a lot going on with us. But if there are some other folks out there that are in the same position as RedCAT, where you got owners and founders of the lower middle-market company, and they want somebody who’s not just going to throw money at them and put demands for growth, but somebody who really wants to partner with them, I really think they should reach out at least think about you and Broadtree.
Rob, how can our listeners find you?
Rob: Yeah, so you can find my contact information, as well as my partners is on Broadtreepartners.com. And I would encourage you to reach out to someone there if you’re looking to meet with anyone at Broadtree Partners. And we’d be happy to discuss anything with you tonight.
Patrick: Well, Rob Joyce, thank you very much. It was an absolute pleasure working with you and I look forward to working with you again very, very soon.
Rob: Thank you, Patrick. I look forward to as well.