Having gone through the recent sale of a group of companies, entrepreneur Jordan Fraser said people thinking of selling their company need to be prepared for an exit.

“It’s not something that you can just choose to do. We had been thinking about this for 18 months and we were able to get a lot of checks and balances in place so that the due diligence  . . . we were prepared for,” said Fraser.

“If one’s thinking about doing it, it’s best to start well in advance before you go to market.”

Fraser, who is based in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, is former President of United Janitorial, Drake Clean Up Systems, and Atlantic Mat Exchange, which were a group of companies sold to TrussPoint Equity Partners and JDI Clean in December 2023.

“We were a full-service building maintenance company. We purchased United Janitorial in 2016 and it had approximately 25 employees and in 2019 we added Drake Clean Up Systems and in 2017 we started Atlantic Mat Exchange,” said Fraser. “We bought the companies, had between 25 and 30 employees, ended up growing them to 140 employees over the next seven years. Ultimately went to market and was purchased by a private equity firm based out of Toronto.”

The process started in February 2023.

“We were very fortunate that we ended up getting eight letters of intent from different equity firms and different potential buyers. We worked with Confederation Mergers and Acquisitions which is based out of Atlantic Canada,” said Fraser. “They were a major part of the success. They spent a lot of time putting it together and pointing us to the right buyers. None of those buyers were local to Atlantic Canada with the exception of maybe one offer that we got. The rest were coming from Ontario as well as Calgary and Vancouver.

“The company of course, the commercial cleaning industry, the floor mat industry is a very non-sexy business but it’s a recurring revenue business where you don’t month after month have to go out and find a new (client). We had tremendous growth steadily for seven years . . . We also were completely hands off owners for the last three years. So we had a management team of senior managers that ran the companies for us day to day. So come the last three years we were only meeting with the team for approximately an hour a week.

“So I think for the potential investors that were looking at us we checked a lot of boxes. We had a team in place where we as owners did not have to stay on at all. We sold 100 per cent of the company. They had a team that was trained and ready to continue operations. We had really positive growth and very positive cash flow as well. We were a very profitable company.”

Fraser is a speaker at this year’s Atlantic Business Transitions Forum in Halifax on April 9.

He will be part of the panel discussion Maximizing Value - Understanding Buyers & How to Negotiate With Them. The session will focus on exploring the different types of potential buyers for a company and how business owners can increase the value of their business even before the negotiation process begins.

Today, Fraser is Owner of O’Connor Glass, Owner of MacArthur’s Appliances and President and CEO of BamText.

“We have owned the appliance store for three years . . . The commercial glass industry we’ve been in for a year and we’re currently expanding throughout Atlantic Canada, hopefully through acquisition in both those markets."

“We’re looking for a company with a really strong financial history of growth or of maintaining a certain level of earnings. That’s number one. And secondary we’re looking for the team. The team has to be in place . . . We’re looking for somebody on that team that we could provide a minority equity ownership to help us grow and to purchase these new companies.”

(Mario Toneguzzi is a veteran of the media industry for more than 40 years and named in 2021 a Top Ten Business Journalist in the world and only Canadian. He also made the RETHINK’s global list as a Top Retail Expert 2024)