If your business is experiencing financial difficulties, rest assured that financial recovery solutions are available. But sometimes selling is the best option.
If your business has been ravaged by financial difficulties, selling it may be the best way to avoid bankruptcy. What are the steps? How do you protect your employees, customers, suppliers and the organization’s value? Here’s an overview of the financial turnaround process and how to connect with potential buyers.
Current situation in the wake of the pandemic
A lot of small and mid-size businesses have faced hardship since the beginning of 2020. In fact, 71% of SMBs have gone into debt as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. On average, they owe $170,000 and three-quarters of these businesses will need more than 1 year to pay down their debt. In Quebec, insolvencies jumped 17% between the second quarters of 2020 and 2021. Now that government subsidies are winding down, the trend is only expected to get worse.
Insolvency trustees and financial recovery advisors know that entrepreneurs tend to be optimistic and solutions-oriented. They’ll try everything before seeking help from specialists. Whether a business has lost an important client, been hit with significantly higher material costs or simply lost control over their finances, most owners will try to set things straight on their own. After all, bold initiative is what got their business off the ground in the first place.
Provide temporary flexibility
Sooner or later, creditors will start demanding repayment. When this happens, many entrepreneurs look for short-term solutions that can actually reduce their chances of getting their finances back on track over the long term. They might take out a high-interest loan or personally guarantee their business’ debts, etc. This is often the stage when they’ll reach out to a financial turnaround specialist. And yet, involving a specialist earlier on would give you more time and options to turn your finances around. What will a specialist do to help?
1. Identify difficulties
Your financial recovery specialist will start by helping you determine what’s causing the problem. This is key in order to come up with the right strategy for your organization.
2. Propose an action plan
Once the issues have been determined, the recovery specialist will propose an action plan that reflects your business’ specific circumstances.
3. Place the business under the protection of the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act
At this stage, it’s a good idea to seek protection for your business under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act. Doing so can prevent a shutdown and eventual bankruptcy, if:
• your company’s debt load is so high that it’s unable to borrow more;
• your company is no longer able to find investors to provide liquidity;
• pressure from your business’ existing creditors is jeopardizing your operations.
Bankruptcy protection is used to temporarily prevent creditors from seeking recourse against your organization’s assets. It also freezes the company’s liabilities. This eases some of the pressure from creditors and gives the company time to prepare a proposal to creditors and restructure the business.
4. Find investors
If you’re able to inject cash back into the business, the funds can be used to finance a settlement with creditors or future operations. Rather than using the funds to cover past losses, you’ll be investing in the future.
If this isn’t possible, the insolvency trustee can help you find a shareholder interested in gaining a stake in the company. The investor’s funds will be used to rekindle the business and settle with your creditors.
However, finding an investor isn’t always possible, especially if the company is in dire straights and market conditions are particularly unfavourable. When this is the case, the best way to save the business is to sell it. This can be hard for business owners to accept. But the advantage is that you can save jobs, preserve relationships with your customers and suppliers, and enable the business to remain operational.
Selling a struggling business
If you have no choice but to sell your business, your insolvency trustee can help you keep it up and running. After all, the objective of the law is to protect the business.
Acting quickly can help you avoid losing suppliers and customers, which could reduce your business’ value or even jeopardize its survival. To make the process successful, you’ll need support from your key employees and you may want to offer them a bonus for staying on.
1. Prepare a presentation document
Your trustee will prepare a document to present the company and provide a transparent description of its financial situation.
2. Approach competitors and suppliers
Next, your trustee will approach competitors who may be interested in broadening their customer base or expanding their operations. Other potential buyers could be suppliers and customers interested in vertically integrating their operations.
3. Ensure you get the right price
At this stage, the trustee will make sure that no decision is made that could worsen the company’s financial situation. The goal is to obtain the best possible price for the business, given the circumstances. The sale will have to be approved by the court.
The advantages of an acquisition for the buyer
Even though the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act provides various tools to proceed with an acquisition, most of the time the buyer of an insolvent business only acquires its assets. Then it’s up to the buyer to figure out how to make these assets profitable.
Acquisitions can be very useful for companies looking to expand. They get the assets, but not the debts, since any amounts owing remain attributable to the insolvent legal entity.
If your business is experiencing financial difficulties, our recovery specialists can help keep the business operational and assist you through the remaining steps.
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ITI’s offer has become much more diverse over the past 30 years. The company talks about the importance of optimizing its processes to drive growth.
Previously operating as ProContact, ITI was founded 30 years ago and initially focused on computer manufacturing and repairs. But the company evolved over the years and it now offers a range of services and solutions covering everything from IT consulting to infrastructure.
Its mandate is to help medium- and large-size businesses from both the public and private industries get the technologies they need to grow. Today, ITI employs roughly 350 people, mainly in Quebec City and Laval, but also in other Canadian cities.
In 2018, ITI welcomed new shareholders in a bid to accelerate growth and propel the company to the forefront of the Quebec industry. After completing a full rebranding, ITI set its sights on a cross-Canada expansion. To make this possible, the company actively sought ideas on how to optimize its operations in order to work more efficiently and gain a foothold in new markets.
“Our company is already known for having a great team that offers sound expertise while maintaining close relationships with customers. So our next challenge was to make our operations more efficient so that we could maintain our growth capacity,” said Steve Morin, ITI’s Vice-President, Partnerships and Business Strategies.
Improving efficiency to support growth
ITI’s shareholders knew they needed to improve operational performance with solutions that were both sustainable and profitable. Recognizing that the company didn’t have the in-house capabilities required to improve their processes, they turned to our experts for help.
ITI’s main objectives were to:
- Optimize processes across all practices to streamline the company’s operations;
- Reduce file volumes and manual data entry to increase productivity;
- Update its IT systems and connect them to the newly developed processes to help the company achieve its goals.
The first step was to gain a solid understanding of ITI’s operational processes so that we could determine where there were opportunities to optimize. Then, based on the findings of this initial exercise, the company wanted to identify a high-performance management software ecosystem that would facilitate the journey for their employees and customers.
Our team worked jointly with ITI staff to map all of the company’s major processes. This gave us an overview and helped us understand how one team’s actions impacted other teams. This step is always very enlightening. Our work took place over four months in early 2020. We held workshops with employees to challenge current procedures, identify best practices and come up with the best possible solutions for the company. Ultimately, we generated more than 150 solutions, including quick-wins and ideas to implement over the medium and long terms.
Concrete solutions for improving productivity
“By October 2020, just five months after receiving the recommendations, we had already implemented 80% of the proposed solutions. The remaining actions—those slated for implementation over the medium and long terms—are dependent on management software that’s still being installed. Once it’s up and running, they may be re-evaluated,” explained Steve Morin.
From September 2020 to spring 2021, we helped ITI’s team define the organization’s needs and choose the right integrated management programs to boost their efficiency and productivity. The software package that was retained is more than just a standard system; it can support several different applications to meet diverse needs, such as sales force management, project management and corporate function management.
Our optimization team includes people who specialize in IT, finance, change management and lean management. They work together to find ways to streamline procedures, optimize workflows and improve productivity overall.
“I don’t think we would have been able to achieve all this on our own. We made a commitment and the team from Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton, with their attentiveness and expertise, kept us on track and on schedule. Improving processes is something that takes a lot of discipline. Letting them take the lead allowed us to take a step back, just like we do with our clients for their technology projects,” said Steve Morin.
In addition to coming up with optimized solutions, the collaboration led to an unexpected result for ITI: they came away with a continuous improvement culture. The exercise helped the company’s leadership team realize just how important it is to review procedures on a regular basis. As a result, they’ve set up a process for managing complaints and suggesting improvements.
Any company can optimize its operations. What’s the key to success? Decision-makers who believe that it’s possible and are willing to invest the time that it takes to make it happen.
09 Nov 2021 | Written by :
Olivier-Don Truong is a management consulting expert at Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton.
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The Grant Thornton International IFRS team has published three publications in the Insights into IAS 36 series.
- Identifying cash-generating units;
- Allocating assets to cash-generating units;
- Allocating goodwill to cash-generating units.
IAS 36 Impairment of Assets is not a new standard and, while many of its requirements are familiar, an impairment review of assets (either tangible or intangible) is frequently challenging to apply in practice. This is because IAS 36’s guidance is detailed, prescriptive and complex in some areas.
The Insights into IAS 36 series have been written to assist preparers of financial statements and those charged with the governance of reporting entities to understand the requirements set out in IAS 36 and revisit some areas where confusion has been seen in practice.
The next three publications in the Insights into IAS 36 series are all about cash-generating units (CGUs):
- Identifying cash-generating units;
- Allocating assets to cash-generating units;
- Allocating goodwill to cash-generating units.
Identifying CGUs is a critical step in the impairment review and can have a significant impact on its results. That said, the identification of CGUs requires judgment. After the entity identifies its CGUs, it must determine which assets belong to which CGUs, or groups of CGUs.
The first publication discusses how to identify CGUs and the other two publications discuss how to allocate assets and goodwill to CGUs.
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The Grant Thornton International IFRS team has published IFRS Viewpoint – Configuration or customisation costs in a cloud computing arrangement.
The IFRS Viewpoint series provides insights on applying IFRS in challenging situations. Each edition will focus on an area where the standards have proved difficult to apply or there is a lack of specifics.
This edition provides guidance on the accounting for costs of configuring or customising a supplier’s application software in a cloud computing or Software as a Service (SaaS) arrangement.
The issue
The International Financial Reporting Interpretations Committee (IFRIC) received a request addressing how a customer should account for costs of configuring or customising a supplier’s application software in a cloud computing or SaaS arrangement. Significant diversity in practice had developed and the IFRIC determined it was appropriate for an agenda decision to be issued.
The IFRIC determined sufficient guidance exists within the relevant accounting standards and therefore no amendments to accounting standards were required. The rationale for arriving at this conclusion, which forms part of the interpretation of IFRS, is set out in the agenda decision.
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