Neil Ackroyd

Welcome to Corporate Finance Television. We are here today talking to Chess Telecom and Richard Btesh about their series of acquisitions last year and their future acquisition criteria for years coming.

Richard Btesh

We have probably done on balance 50 deals in the last 5 or 6 years. We run at 9 or 10 deals a year and we have got an integration team that can deal with about one acquisition a month. We can do a deal in an afternoon – that is the quickest deal that we have done. We are able, with our operation, to combine ? operation to ours with only modest additional expenditure. Their gross margin drops down to our EBITDA and that is the secret of the successful model. The Chess integration machine is not so vast that it won’t accommodate their customers and it can serve their customers in the way that they have been able to.

Neil Ackroyd

You are able to reference from people that you have sold to in the past but actually the customers were looked after and the business was successful going forward.

Richard Btesh

Probably one of our most successful deals was from somebody that we had bought from 3 times. They built a base – they sold it – they’ve rebuilt it with us supporting them – sold it – and then finally last September they decided to exit from telecoms completely and at each time we have been able to look at their base and work with them and support them in the meantime and give the entrepreneur a capital release.

Neil Ackroyd

You have got the funding from Barclays, the money is there, keen to do the deals and you are able to reference previous success with people who you have done deals with in the past. Have I missed anything out there?

Richard Btesh

No I couldn’t have put it better myself!