Braham Moondi:
Hello everyone!
Welcome to the November episode of BDO’s PE Market Pulse, where we invite a leader in the private equity ecosystem to share their thoughts on current market activity.I'm your host, Braham Moondi, National leader of BDO Canada’s PE practice and assurance, and I have the immense pleasure of having Liam Cheung join us today. Liam is a managing director at Kensington Capital Partners, a private equity firm that provides Canadian investors with continuous access to a diversified portfolio of investments across a broad range of industry sectors and investment stages, covering the North American landscape. An accomplished senior leader. Liam has significant experience across both private equity and corporate development, including having his past leadership roles at BlackBerry. He had in-depth industry knowledge within the retail and consumer business sector, a focus of our episode today. So welcome Liam. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Liam Cheung:
Thanks so much for having me.
Braham Moondi:
Of course. And then, retail in consumer business has gone through a lot of change in the past few years. So very much looking forward to our discussion today. And with that, we'll head right into the questions.
So the first one for you, Liam, the last couple of years. High inflation rates, high interest rates and increased cost sensitivity as a result of it, have made it a very challenging environment for both M&A and dealmaking in the retail and consumer business space. We are seeing the interest rates stabilize a little bit now, but what are the top external factors that might impact dealmaking in this sector as you look forward?
Liam Cheung:
Yeah, it's a great question. So despite the interest rate relief that we've seen this year, there continues to be a lot of focus on the health of the consumer. We've seen the basic economics of many consumer businesses get turned on their head coming out of COVID, with customer acquisition costs rising rapidly and input cost compressing margins. Price increases, which were readily accepted 2 or 3 years ago, are now being met with resistance from many retailers, with many consumers being stretched by basic living costs.
The focus on understanding input costs and supply chain becoming even more central time for writing and investment, since margins are under pressure. Finally, I would say don't underestimate the impact ultra fast fashion retailers like Temu and Shein are having on many categories in the retail landscape. We've seen them bid aggressively on advertising and come in at super low price points in a way that requires many Canadian retailers to rethink their value proposition.
Braham Moondi:
Now, that is that is an excellent point, actually, Liam. Especially when you see the widespread acceptance of those organizations too.
Looking at it from a little bit outside of Canada, there are a lot of PE firms that are across the globe investing in Canada, including a significant number of US firms entering the Canadian market.
So how do you find the current, competitive landscape for retail and consumer business deals in Canada?
Liam Cheung:
Yeah, I mean, it certainly, certainly used to be that the border was a major obstacle for U.S. investors.
But as valuations began to creep up several years ago, U.S. players had to expand their search to find reasonable entry multiples. Canada was a no brainer because of the proximity, the kind of business culture and significant discount most Canadian businesses trade at. Along the same time, many private equity firms also invested heavily into their outbound sourcing engines during this time. They built technology and became much more efficient at identifying companies and managing or even automating a lot of the outbound communications with them at scale. This has allowed them to cast a very wide net. Now there's very little difference to them between a Canadian target or a U.S. target. And now that the door has been opened, I think the US firms are here to stay.
Many of the US firms are highly capable and have tremendous brands, and we actually welcome them because it opens up a new pool of interested buyers when we go to sell a business. That said, I think the local investor has an advantage as Canadian firms often have a reputation as being much more friendly to others around the table and can be more easily referenced through common connections.
I'll say that also, many generalists have shied away from consumer and retail as of late due to concerns over consumer resilience. So competition in the space has certainly declined in the past few years.
Braham Moondi:
Now that's amazing. That's actually a really good perspective, Liam, to, you know, we think of competition from inbound perspective. But of course, when looking for exit opportunities, it does it does create a bigger pool there. So that's a really good perspective to be mindful of. Now talking about just retail and consumer business industry and some of the trends, some key trends that have been top of mind in the sector have been continuous push for digital transformation.
There's been conversations. You mentioned e-commerce and omnichannel retailing. Supply chain challenges, pressure for more personalized customer experiences. So in your view, what is the biggest trend or opportunity in this sector?
Liam Cheung:
So I actually think we're in a period where many businesses are focusing on getting back to basics. Everything you mentioned is critical and navigating those topics well is becoming table stakes just to survive in this consumer environment. Many companies like Shopify, Amazon and AliExpress, have made it so much easier for businesses to start a consumer brand and bring their goods to market, which has caused saturation in many categories. Today's buyers are also highly educated and can easily price compare across retailers.
And with all this competition, the days of the easy profit through doing marketing optimization are gone. As a result, many brands have come full circle and are focusing on the fundamentals. They're asking themselves, who is my core customer base? How do I build a product offering that meets the needs and wants of that customer? How can I establish a meaningful connection with the customer and have them coming back again and again? These questions might sound simple, but the answers to many of these questions were distorted. Or frankly, the questions weren't even being asked as cheap money and scarce product availability drove lazy habits in retail. Businesses have spent time during much of the follow up period post-COVID continuing to run the COVID playbook, often with very poor results. Now that's sufficiently in the rearview mirror, and these businesses have been soul searching to understand what the true value proposition is with their customer base.
Braham Moondi:
Now, that's actually, you know, COVID has played such a fundamental role in this space. It's really important for the viewers to understand and to really hone in that, you know, soul searching. And what is my core business? What is my, who is my customer?
So coming back to Kensington, Kensington focuses on North American companies with EBITDA ranging from 5 to 25 million. But what are some of the key attributes that you're looking for? Kensington is looking for when investing in retail and consumer businesses, specifically outside of traditional metrics.
Liam Cheung:
So we spend a ton of time trying to understand what the customer thinks about the product and experience that the business is offering. We see that as the core driver of business success, and many of the traditional metrics, including financial results, are simply just downstream of that.
I think as consumers, we're all fed up with the volume of noise coming from email marketing and search, video and social media ads. With so many retailers and consumer brands fighting for our attention. Customer acquisition has become incredibly expensive. So retaining that customer and increasing lifetime value is critical for success.
Each repeat purchase a customer makes is so much more profitable than the last. That building a loyal following is fundamental to achieving revenue stability and strong profit margins. We want to understand if people are passionate about the brand and the products being sold. We do look at product reviews, but you have to take that all as a grain of salt. There's a lot of noise in there because brands are trying to game the system, and the reviews that are real tend to have a really negative bias to them. We love to see proof of customers who are so in love with the brand that they become self-appointed advocates, which you can often find by scouring online communities like Twitter and Reddit.
We do a lot of analysis to understand that repeat purchase behaviors. There are several factors that go into this, including having the right merchandise and being top of mind with the customer at the right time.
In an ideal world, the business has built their customer base into a community or movement, and that has an identity and a clear mission. We've seen brands in our portfolio like SavageX and Pela do a great job of this.
Most retailer and consumer brands can't do this, but it's incredibly powerful if they do. The last thing I'll add is we've seen that consumer preferences can be very fickle, and the competitive landscape and consumer can shift overnight. So diversification is important for the long term success and health of a business. That doesn't mean you should be everything to everyone. But we do ask do they have multiple demand generation channels? Do they have multiple products that sell at scale?
Do they distribute more than one way, such as direct to consumer, marketplace and wholesale? We're looking to partner with the business for many years, so having an enduring brand is important to us.
Braham Moondi:
Now that's fantastic. And when you mention, you know, partnering with a brand, can you also share with us an example of how you partner with the business operating in that space?
Liam Cheung:
For sure. And so I'll say, you know, every business, that we partner with is a little different, and have their own challenges. But, one example I provide is, we invested in a business called Bold By Nature, founded and operated by a woman named Caroline Bolduc in Erin Ontario. Bold’s core offering is frozen raw pet food. And they distribute primarily through neighborhood pet retail stores coast to coast. What we saw when we partnered with Caroline and her team, it's a great product and a fast-growing subcategory run by a passionate and energetic industry veteran.
What we try to do is provide resources, share experience and open our network while giving the people operating the business enough trust and freedom to run the business. How they think it should be run. Since forming our partnership nearly four years ago, we've taken on several projects. We worked on a rebrand to professionalize the image of the business while retaining the brand's core character. We expanded the product line to include complementary offerings to the raw pet food, such as toppings and supplements. We upgraded the manufacturing facilities, we implemented critical operating software such as SAP and Redzone, and we launched the product in the US to drastically increase the addressable market. We at Kensington are not experts in any of these areas, but we have invested in enough consumer businesses that we've developed the pattern recognition to understand what creates value at various stages of a business's journey. And I have to give credit to the team at Bold who's doing all the hard work on these projects.
Braham Moondi:
That's fantastic, Liam. And, you know, allow the operators to really be able to run the business and, you know, give them ideas and partner with them on that journey. That is amazing. So we'll now head into some of our lightning round questions. So very quick questions for you. Liam.
First one: best source to stay up to date on market dynamics or market intelligence.
Liam Cheung:
I think this applies to all industries. Follow industry operators and investors at all levels of the org chart on Twitter.
Braham Moondi:
All right. Perfect. If you had to invest in a retail business right now, what sub-sector would you choose?
Liam Cheung:
So onshoring and automation are two big trends we're seeing right now. One way to ride these waves is through mission critical applications where data privacy is essential. Industrial robotics would be one example of that.
Braham Moondi:
That would be cool. And then first thing that comes to mind when you think of AI.
Liam Cheung:
So in the context of retail and consumer, I think of the opportunity to build personalized connections with our customers at scale, for example, through customer support and personalized shoppers.
Braham Moondi:
That'd be cool. And if you were to start a retail business tomorrow, what would be? I think we talked a little bit about it, but what would be your founding principle or your core value.
Liam Cheung:
Service to the customer as well as you can, provide as much value and end work that you can like product design and engineering.
Braham Moondi:
Yeah, that's fantastic. And finally, current or any recent book that you read that you would like to share with us.
Liam Cheung:
So not a new book, but I recently read and really enjoyed Upheaval by Jared Diamond.
Braham Moondi:
That's fantastic. All right. So that's all we have for today. Thank you so much again for joining us, Liam. And, yeah, we look forward to talking to you a little bit more.
Liam Cheung:
It was a pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.
Braham Moondi:
Thank you.