Mergers & Acquisitions

There are plenty of good things to say about pride. After all, it’s one of the noble impulses that gets us out of bed in the morning and motivates us to do the best job we can for our customers, employees, and others who depend on us. But when it makes anyone resist the idea that today, every print company owner should be preparing either to acquire or to be acquired, it becomes something else. Steer clear of the trap it can set for your business when your moment of truth arrives.

As we discussed in the first installment of this series, the pace of mergers and acquisitions among printing and packaging firms finally is on the rise after years of languishing in the doldrums. That means there's heightened interest in finding out what companies are worth and in determining what kinds of deals can be structured around these valuations.

In M&As, good faith is everything, and it begins with your everyday outreach to the people who work for you. Keep on finding opportunities to let them know that you value their contributions and that you have their backs today and in the long term. That way, when the time comes to share your plans with the workforce as a whole, the things you’ll want to say most will go without saying.

New Direction Partners, the leading M&A advisory firm serving the printing and packaging industries, and North American Publishing Co.’s Printing Impressions Group, which comprises Printing Impressions, packagePrinting and In-plant Graphics brands, have announced a new, multi-channel partnership to educate print professionals about the current industry M&A landscape, as well as to serve as a conduit for specific transaction opportunities.

Selling a printing or a packaging company is complex. Deciding to sell a printing or a packaging company is complicated. The difference? Selling is a straightforward business process with clear-cut steps and rules. Deciding to sell, on the other hand, is a deep dive into the psyche of the seller. For first-time sellers, it can be uncharted territory.

Once upon a time, printing and packaging could get by without being data-driven, and so could M&As. This was because in those days, a lot of dealmaking took place locally. If you were a printer in Rochester, NY, for example, you probably knew personally all of the likely candidates in the Rochester area. If you were an M&A consultant, a well-thumbed Rolodex was your most frequently used tool. Personal relationships are still important in M&As, but the geography is bigger.

If you've decided to grow your business by acquisition, it follows that you're thinking like a buyer. But, can you think like a seller as well? You'll need to move nimbly from one mindset to another as you strategize the purchase that you want to make. Your own goals will be clear enough, but it will be harder to attain them if you can't also inject yourself into the thought process on the seller's end.

In this new editorial series for Printing Impressions, New Direction Partners will offer guidance in a business strategy that we believe every printer needs to be thoroughly acquainted with: the planning and execution of successful mergers and acquisitions. It's a complex subject and, in columns and blogs to come, we'll detail many of the actions that take place when two printing companies decide to come together as a whole that's greater than the sum of the parts.

In my experience, when differences about selling price and deal structure come up in M&A negotiations, they typically aren’t small. They can be reconciled, but doing that requires flexibility and seriousness on both sides. In M&As, learning through mistakes benefits nobody if the wisdom comes only after the deal has died. It's always better to grasp the opportunity with a clear-eyed understanding of the facts going in.

Calling the M&A market “hot to trot” would be an exaggeration at this point, but there are good reasons to think that fewer players are suffering from cold feet. Interest in transactions is picking up. Banks are more open to proposals for funding M&As.