On this week’s episode of M&A Masters, we speak with Skip Maner.
Skip is a General Partner of NewSpring Capital and founder of the firm’s dedicated buyout strategy, NewSpring Holdings, and was recently featured in Mergers & Acquisitions Magazine.
For over 20 years, NewSpring Capital has been seizing compelling opportunities and offering a fresh approach to building businesses in the lower middle market. There’s a lot more to them than meets the eye and we have just the right person to walk us through it, so listen and discover:
- Capital solutions across five distinct strategies
- NewSprings Holdings’ ideal targets
- Upcoming trends for 2022 and beyond
- And more
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
TRANSCRIPT:
Patrick Stroth: Hello there, I’m Patrick Stroth, trusted authority on executive and transactional liability, and president of Rubicon M&A Insurance Services. Welcome to M&A Masters where I speak with the leading experts in mergers and acquisitions. And we’re all about one thing here. That’s a clean exit for owners, founders and their investors. Today I’m joined by Skip Maner, general partner of NewSpring Capital. Based in Pennsylvania, NewSpring Capital for 20 years, has partnered with high performing lower middle market companies and dynamic industries to catalyze new growth, and seize compelling opportunities. Recently featured in Mergers and Acquisitions magazine, Skip is the founder of NewSpring’s dedicated buyout strategy NewSpring Holdings. And so then there, you’re going to find there’s going to be a lot more to NewSpring than meets the eye. And we have just the person to walk us through this. So Skip, thanks for joining me today.
Skip Maner: Thanks, Patrick. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
Patrick: Now, before we dive into all things, new spring, let’s give our audience a little bit of context. And we’ll start with you. What led you to this point in your career?
Skip: Well, it’s I guess, I’ve been in private equity for about 26 years now. So it’s been quite a ride. And I guess I think I started when I started my private equity journey when I was in college, when I started two companies. I wasn’t I wasn’t the Elon Musk of the time, but it was enough money to pay for beer and a couple of books, maybe. But, uh, you know, after I graduated from college, I started two additional companies. And I really think, again, that’s where I started in private equity, because I’ve always, you know, really, I think, taken a highly operational approach to the companies that I’ve ultimately invested in, in my, in my career. I was 23 years old, when the bank called me and told me, I wasn’t making payroll. And I had to figure it out. So I’ve sat on that, that entrepreneurial, and that founder side of the table. I went back to business school after selling two of the companies.
And, and really, part of the reason I went back to business school was to, you know, you know, small business owner oftentimes feels like the world, you know, the world revolves around them. And it really, it was far from the truth. And there were things happening in the macro environment that I really wanted to understand. And so graduated from Wharton in 95. And got into private equity, really in the in the mid 90s. So I’ve seen a lot of the the cycle and a lot of the maturation of the industry. I think when I graduated from Wharton, you know, probably less than 10, 5% of us went into private equity. You know, that’s probably closer to 25-30% now. So it’s, you know, it’s been, it’s been a great ride, again, seeing many, many cycles, and, you know, thankfully around to talk about the cycles.
Patrick: Well, contrary to its name, okay, NewSpring I mentioned in the intro is not new to private equity, you’re one of the rare firms out there that been around now for two decades. So, as we get in, we talk about NewSpring, let’s kind of open it up with I always like finding out, you know, the culture of a company or the insight, if you figure out, you know, how they came up with their name, specifically, because it’s not named Maner Capital. So we’ll start with the name. Tell me about NewSpring.
Skip: Yeah, well, I think it’s all about, you know, we’re all about growth, and we’re all about formation. And I think, you know, just the combination of really that, you know, ideas springing forth. And, and, and, you know, and surrounding them with, you know, with this idea of how to take companies to the next level. NewSpring seemed like an appropriate name, I can’t take credit for it. Some of my partners and predecessors yeah, could have been, again, I think the the culture around again, we focus on the lower middle market, and again, so that could be companies in our definition, between 10 and 100 million in size. Those are even at 100 million. It’s still very small companies in the whole scheme of the world. And I think that the notion of NewSpring really helps. We want to take a fresh approach to, you know, the company building experience.
Patrick: Right, and it sounds like you’re on the beginning of a cycle, you’re not at the end of a cycle. So, you know, you’ve got that emphasis and as being, you know, experienced at 20 years ago, is really impressive, but 20 years in this space, you’re not doing just one thing, NewSpring is a series of a number of silos. Let’s talk about those for a moment.
Skip: Yeah, and it’s look, it’s it’s a fun story to talk about because again, the longevity of the firm, you know, again, I can’t take credit for it is really really Impressive. So, you know, when I guess I’m you know, proud to be a part of it. We just invested our $2 billion over that 20, 22 years that we’ve been involved in 184 companies. And what’s really interesting, and this is, you know, talks a little bit about the maturation of private equity, it took us 17 years to invest the first billion. And then it took us five years to invest the next billion. And we do that through we have five investment strategies, again, each focus on a different segment of what a lower middle market company might need.
So I’ll get to my my segment last, but we have a growth strategy that invests in software and tech enabled services companies. They just closed their their fifth fund, and they do minority capital, minority equity capital, onto the balance sheet of companies that really need a last round of capital to get them to profitability. They’re averaging, I think company investments such as maybe 20 million in revenues. Our health care fund, which they’re closing their third fund right now, is focused on again, similar growth stage companies with tech enabled services companies all around the healthcare space, especially pharma, and niche clinical providers. And then we have a mezzanine fund. Our mezzanine fund is closing their fourth fund, and that is focused on subordinated debt, and really supporting other private equity sponsors into buyout transactions. And then we recently founded what we call NewSpring Franchise.
NewSpring Franchise is a group started to really buy into compelling and interesting franchise and multi unit businesses, consumer oriented businesses. And then what I run is what we call NewSpring Holdings. NewSpring Holdings is is our buyout function that we started in 2015. And what we do is, do control buyouts into founder and family run businesses. We really like to find companies that have, you know, been on a journey for, you know, five to 20 years, but, you know, may have a transition issue or a desire to grow to the next level, and want a partner to do so. So again, it’s with those those five strategies that we kind of look at the lower end of the market. And, again, it’s a nice broad horizontal approach, where really, you know, a lot of the you know, the need that a middle market company might have a lower middle market company might have, you know, we can solve in this building.
Patrick: Well, that’s something because, and I’ve got a real soft spot for the lower middle market, particularly because you’ve got owners and founders that started with nothing and created tremendous value where like I said, nothing existed before. And they don’t know how to get past that inflection point, there’s some their content to stay where they are, but there are others are wanting, you know, the they either, you know, by just their success, they’re a victim of their success. So they either get to the inflection point by becoming, you know, they’re too small for enterprise, but they’re too big to be small. And they, they need some outside force, outside assistance to help them. And if there aren’t, you know, experienced owners that have gone through that process multiple times.
They don’t know where to turn. And but you know, and if they don’t know anybody, they get by default, they go to an institution or a brand name, or something is out there. And they really are left short. And what happens is, unfortunately, they’re they’re underserved. But they’re overcharged. And that’s why it’s helpful to have firms like NewSpring out there that are really committed to this segment. Talk to me about the issue where you’ve been around again, I keep hammering on this, but you’ve been around for over 20 years, and you did not scale upstream in terms of deal size. Why is that?
Skip: Well, you know, I think it’s because we love the opportunity at the lower middle market. I mean, again, you have, that’s where most of the companies are, and if you look at where, you know, where we are in, you know, in the in the cycle, you know, the oldest baby boomer right now is 75 years old. And we’re in the midst of what’s going to be as the baby boomers age, you know, the largest transfer of wealth in the history of the world. That’s something like $10 trillion is tied up in, you know, family run businesses. And you know, we want to be we wanted to be a part of that. So that’s why NewSpring chose to stay and keep our fund sizes small, so that we could continue to to really be experts and build a preeminent firm that focuses on these lower middle market companies. And you’re right that you know, the needs or the needs are very different.
You know, I Patrick, you hit the nail on the head, which you know, when you we find a business owner that’s, you know, as a $40 million business and they’re making $5 million in EBITDA a year, you know, and and they had their, they’re at a point of inflection and what in order to grow the business, they may have to take the EBITDA backwards or you know, go on a hiring spree or do things they haven’t done like go international. What we’ve done is build our firm to serve all those needs. And really what, you know, it starts with being able to apply a different risk profile. An owner, all their eggs are in one basket. And when we do a transit transaction with an owner, you know, we’ll go in and we’ll say, look, we’re going to provide you with a with an ample amount of liquidity today.
So you can diversify your wealth. But then we’ll ask the owner to, to roll in 20 to 40% of the of the ongoing transaction. And, you know, frankly, as an owner, that’s like having a, you know, a, you know, somebody manage your wealth for you. But it’s just in your private equity asset, because what we’re going to do is apply our approach and what we’ve done at NewSpring Holdings is really build this go to market strategy, where we’ve surrounded us, ourselves and our eco sphere with very senior executives who have built businesses. Again, we’re not former investment bankers we’re former operators. My partner, one of my partners, ran a two and a half billion dollar business that he built organically and through 100 acquisitions over over a 30 year career.
And we’ve surrounded that team were of functional operating experts where we can go in and if we get involved, these are experts that help, you know, take a company and position it then for different organic means that we might bring to the table or a significant amount of M&A. We’ve done we have four companies in our in my portfolio today, we’ve done close to 30 acquisitions in the last five years into those four companies. And we really think you can create an exponential outcome by by doing both organic and acquisitive tactics.
Patrick: I think it’s just a competitive advantage that I hear you have one of the questions I asked was, you know, what do you bring to the table. But I think, clearly, this operational approach and grow through operation is a huge advantage over other firms or investors out there that are more financially guided. And I think that by doing this, I can’t imagine just putting myself in the in the shoes of an owner. I want to grow, I want to change, I want to do this, but I don’t want to bet the company on it. And there’s no margin for error. And so you not only need the expertise from somebody outside, and that cares and wants to partner with you, but you want to be able to diversify, you know your wealth so that you aren’t betting your entire future on a change that you need to do anyway. And so I think it makes it a lot easier.
Skip: Yeah, we call it we call it a different lens of ownership. Again, you know, it’s an owner is gonna make a certain decision that we would all make a rational decision, you know, if they own 100% of one. And, you know, this really allows you to expand and put a different lens of ownership on. Again, we’re, you know, we’re not an ATM, you know, money isn’t free. But again, if an owner is able to diversify their wealth, they could make different decisions. And then then again, by sitting next to us, you’ve got the former CEO of $3 billion company, you’ve got, you know, we’re gonna put board members on the company that are industry experts here. And on our, on our boards today, we have the former CIO of Comcast and the former chairman of NASDAQ, and other really preeminent individuals that are going to be the industry guides. And then we’ve got the functional guides that can fill in holes, if there’s holes at the companies. Or that can be strategic advisors to those companies as they embark on what is, you know, what is a new kind of op tempo and a new kind of way of looking at the business.
Patrick: The other advantage I see for private equity over strategics, and other you know, M&A investors out there is that you mentioned this with the role of equity is the opting for a second bite at the apple for owners and founders, which I think is great, where they go ahead and agree to, you know, a hold on to a 30% minority stake in their company. And that 30% in five years could be worth more than the 70% that that they that they got to closing originally. And I think that’s a formula for success. How could anybody turn away from that?
Skip: Well, and I can promise you that we work every day to make sure that happens, because that’s the way that we’re going to make money. And, you know, look at the example is this that if you know, the four companies we own today, the aggregated revenues, when we got involved in them were about $50 million dollars. Today, they’re over 700 million in revenues, and about, you know, close to 60 million of EBITDA. So, you know, those owners and the stake that they’ve rolled in and retained is you know, is benefiting from that. And for me, you know, losing sleep every night over how we’re going to make them all successful.
Patrick: And of course we put it in a disclaimer right now that past performance is not an indication of future results and all that good stuff. I mean, you’re seeing this, because you’ve got a lot of, you know, very smart people. And they’re all committed, which, which I really appreciate too and then part of the passion with the lower middle market, is that trust, that you’re all kind of pulling in the same direction. And that’s outstanding. As great as all this sounds, I’m sure, you know, some listeners are sitting there saying, how do we get in on this. Give us a a profile of your ideal target. What is NewSpring Holdings looking for?
Skip: Yeah, so again, this is the NewSpring Holding segment of NewSpring, but we look for companies, let’s say between 10 and 15 million in revenues. What we do is like to get started with, again, it’s a term everybody uses with a platform, and what we will have done prior to that is really, you know, try to take a deep look at an industry where we believe there’s a decent amount of fragmentation, the companies that we target are all profitable. And because we do use a small amount of debt, you know, in all of our transactions, you know, we’ll come in, again, when we get involved, we buy a majority stake, give an owner a nice payday today, but let us, you know, move into the driver’s seat with that owner as a partner, that, you know, we can create the best outcome together.
And so then what we’ll do is, we’ll we’ll launch into a, you know, a program where we, again, if we got involved with, we think there’s a lot of fragmentation, and then we will try to aggressively not only work the 100 day plan, where we’re putting the organic growth tactics in place, but then, you know, do a significant amount of M&A around that. And so, you know, really, it’s, it’s an owner is who would want to get involved with us. It’s an owner, that’s saying to themselves, my gosh, I know, there’s something better out there, but I don’t want to do it, as we talked about. I don’t want to take that risk, but it’s its owner like that, it’s an owner, that they may have, you know, may not have a way to you know, trans transition the business may not be like, you know, stated succession plan. And so, you know, those are places that we can, you know, that we find that we can, you know, really, really maximize.
Patrick: Gotcha. with and in terms of industry, because you got a healthcare group, and you’ve got the franchising. Industries, geographies, any kind of limitations or anything?
Skip: Yeah, primarily US based. And then, you know, we tend to look at the world through a horizontal view. And that means we look for tech enabled services companies. And so we look for a type of company. And that puts us in different vertical markets. In our four companies today, we’re in FinTech, government services, last mile logistics, commerce, etc. And, and then cloud. So again, different vertical markets, but you know, the types of dynamics, we find that our companies really pervade the vertical market. Again, what we’re usually find when we go into a company is that they, they haven’t, they don’t have a big salesforce.
They haven’t focused on marketing. The finance organization is usually used as a way to, you know, how much cash they have in the bank and and how much their taxes are. And so what we try to do is turn each one of those functional groups into a strategic weapon, and really help position for growth, that again, when we deliver the company, you know, to the to the next level, it’s, you know, we’ve scaled it, we’ve de risked it because a lot of times companies have customer concentration or supplier concentration or owner concentration. So what we would have done is diversified all that and that that should mean that we deliver to more than the middle market, that a company that is significantly less risk attached to it.
Patrick: Well and I would think on the exit side for this, you know, the firms out there are getting bigger and bigger and you’ve got SPACs, and so they’re all these bigger entities that are buyers out there for your lower middle market that when they’re ready to graduate, there’s there’s a whole you know, very eager marketplace looking looking to make the acquisitions. You, you sparked the thought that I had, tell me about a an epiphany that you witnessed with one of your portfolio companies where you mentioned the 100 days where you come in, you do the analysis and you’ve got the game plan and you have laid out a plan of action. And tell me a time where in that in those early months, you just saw that owner and founder all of a sudden see the light bulb come on, say, I never thought I could pull this off. Anything like that?
Skip: Yeah, look, it’s and this is why I love what I do. Because we really think that we create fundamental value where, again, there’s a lot of ways to make money and, you know, financial engineering, and in levering companies up and cutting costs, that may be one way. The way we make money is through growth. And so it’s really fun. Again, a lot of the companies we get involved with, you know, I’ve not I’ve not been in growth mode, again, for the reasons we’ve talked about. And so, I think one of the most fun things is when we come in, and, you know, again, I’ve heard this many, many times, you know, from from founders, well, we tried to hire a sales force, I had a sales manager, you know, I went through three of them in two years, and it just wasn’t working out. So we just gave up.
Patrick: That’s painful, yes. Those are painful comments.
Skip: And, and so you know, it’s, it’s really hard to grow a company unless you, you know, again, turn sales into, you know, a real function with real strong people. And so I think one of the most fun things is, is to, again, you know, we have, we have the experts here to, you know, to start to bring in and build that sales function. And it starts with better defining the customers better defining who, you know, you don’t want to do business with as well as who you do want to do business with, because again, a lot of things we find are, you know, again, any revenue is good revenue. And that’s not always the case when you want when you want to, to grow. And so, you know, really the most fun epiphany is when you, you start to see the effect of bringing in an institutional quality sales team, and you start to see those growth numbers tip up, tick up, because organic growth is oftentimes, you know, far cheaper than then, you know, any other type.
Patrick: Okay, I just a lot of fun, particularly that because I think, you know, either labor, personnel, or sales marketing are those very nuanced types of types of practices that are really tough, and they’re very scary. And that’s, that’s something you bring on. Now, you’ve had over close to 200 acquisitions throughout this whole tenure. Let’s talk real quick about how that process has changed, because it’s gotten a lot easier for the whole M&A process. And one of the ways that it’s gotten easier is to reduce risk for the parties involved. And you know, that’s being done now by a product brought in by the insurance industry called reps and warranties insurance.
And the purpose of the product is essentially, it takes the indemnity obligation between seller to buyer, transfer that away from the seller for a couple bucks for premium to an insurance company. Therefore, if there’s a breach of the seller reps, rather than a major escrow or fear of a big clawback by the buyer who’s been financially harmed, because even though they did the diligence, something was missed. And in a perfect world, nothing would be missed, but that happens. And so this product has become a very elegant, elegant, elegant tool that’s now available for the lower middle market. But you know, don’t take my word for it, you know, Skip good, bad or indifferent. What’s been your experience with rep and warranty insurance?
Skip: Yeah, look, it’s for perspective. I remember the first time I used it was maybe 15-16 years ago, and trying to find somebody to underwrite, you know, rep and warranty insurance, you know, there was sagebrush rolling through the streets. It was a very different market. And, you know, so I think you’re right, it has increased the lubricity of getting a getting a transaction done today. So we use it in 80-85% of our transactions today. It really takes I mean, it works just like insurance instead of one owner, you know, basically having all of the risk of, again, having made a mistake, or having some warranty claim come up from, you know, five years ago, it’ll again, allows the pooled interest to underwrite to that and it’s only the exception where we don’t use it in in the trend, and again, in the significant amount of transactions we’ve closed in the last five years.
Patrick: Yeah, I think I think the nicest development, and the success of rep and warranty has been eligibility has increased, not tightened. The claims haven’t hurt the industry. And you know, very much at all, so rates have been low, they’re beginning to rise solely because the demand. Demand for the product has gone way up. And and that’s what’s driven it. One of the things I did want to point out because it’s just not broadcast that often is that rep and warranty was originally reserved for deals with a transaction value of $100 million plus. Pre COVID, just pre COVID, that threshold dropped by a couple of markets down to deals as low as $20 million in transaction value. There is now as of July 2021, a market out there that has a product that can insure M&A deals with transactions from 1 million transaction value up to 10 million and insure the entire transaction.
Slightly different product it is for sell side deals. But what we think is important is that as you know, the market grows, that there are just different options available out there. And what we like is just the sheer number of add ons that are happening. And so there may be preferred destinations for platform investments, there are going to be way more add ons. And if you have tools that are now available for those add ons, all the better. Skip as we record this right now, you know, we’re passing through the pandemic, and now we’re dealing as Californians would almost call the aftershocks with the Delta variants. So things are kind of hanging on. But we’re coming in now we’re racing into end of 21, looking at 2022 what trends do you see going forward? Either, you know, macro or just NewSpring yourself?
Skip: Well, it’s I mean, first of all, you know, again, the dealing with COVID. I think we all know that, you know, we thought the vaccine was a total panacea. I think it’s definitely helping but I think, you know, COVID is now becoming more, you know, perhaps a longer term part of our overall lives. And so, you know, that op tempo that COVID has created, there’s no, it’s not going to go away anytime soon. So I think we’re, you know, we’re, we think we’re going to deal with an economy economy that is, is, you know, is affected by that. You know, at the same time, you know, there’s a lot of dollars sloshing around in the economy.
You know, with what the Fed has done, and what the tray and Treasury slash Congress has done at the same time, you know, there’s, there’s a, there’s a lot of capital out there. And, you know, thankfully, you know, the quick action, you know, that the the government and Fed did, back in March, April, May last year, I, you know, served its purpose. You know, I think 2022 is gonna be a great year. It’s, you know, I do worry about, you know, going further out that, you know, we’re going to see, you know, some issues in the economy, you know, our companies are already seeing wage inflation, you know, you can take price hikes away, but, you know, you don’t take wages back.
Patrick: No. Yeah, that’s true.
Skip: You know, with, you know, with a lot of the things that happened with COVID, which some of which are good, some are bad. Number one, you know, a lot of people decided to retire and are not coming back to the workforce. So that takes a significant pool away. You know, the lack of immigration over the last five years. You know, we need immigration to grow our economy. You know, on the good side, you know, a lot of, I think, the most business formation in the history of the country in the last year.
Patrick: Yes.
Skip: So that’s a good thing. So, look, you know, there’s a lot of good and bad, you know, I think the key to founders and other people in private equity is you always have to assume that the, you know, again, I’ve been doing this 25 years, I think this is my third downturn, you know, and, you know, I guess we’re in an upturn now, but, you know, things go in cycles. And so you have to, you have to invest and run your businesses thinking that, you know, you know, take advantage of what you can but but know that you’ve got to architect for the downside.
And, look, we’re doing the same things, you know, today that we were doing, you know, last year. It’s a seller’s market. It is not a buyer’s market, because there’s all those dollars out there. So it’s a great time to be a seller. We have to be disciplined. And, you know, I guess our thought is that if we do our the right things by picking the right companies, and then running our game plan, that we can create the growth dynamic, that, you know, that allows us to kind of, you know, succeed in upturns and downturns.
Patrick: Skip, how can our audience members find you? How can we find NewSpring Capital?
Skip: You, our website is newspringcapital.com. We are in Radnor, Pennsylvania, right right outside of Philadelphia. My email is smaner@newspringcapital.com and happy to talk anytime.
Patrick: Great, well Skip, a lot of fun. It was a pleasure speaking with you today. Thanks so much.
Skip: All right. Appreciate it, Patrick. Take care.