As part of Euromena Consulting’s work in the energy and smart cities sectors across Europe, Africa and the MENA region, our team completed a target acquisition screening with a European multinational energy conglomerate with presence in the Middle East. In the rapidly evolving GCC energy landscape, the client was seeking to promptly enter the promising energy efficiency market by identifying potential targets for majority shareholder acquisition. Euromena Consulting met the client’s needs by assessing and qualifying potential, credible targets for acquisition and subsequently supporting the client in every phase of acquiring one of the prioritized targets.
The project consisted of four key phases; the first phase included initial targets screening. This preparatory phase allowed us to baseline the market status and perform a market sizing assessment on the short, mid and long-term view. The team conducted exhaustive primary and secondary research to screen and evaluate more than 150 potential targets that resonate with several key criteria including client’s objectives, target’s size and maturity, product/service relevance and value proposition, among others.
The second phase of the project involved targets shortlisting. The team screened and identified a list of 40 to 50 directly relevant targets, based on a set of defined criteria. The shortlisting criteria included relevance to the client’s strategic intent, market positioning and performance, financial performance and geographic relevance.
Based on this step, the third phase of the project included a detailed profiling of 4 to 5 key shortlisted targets. The Euromena Consulting team considered several dimensions when analyzing companies including history, management and governance models, market focus, competitive landscape, sales and distribution models, financial performance, operational efficiencies/readiness and appetite for acquisition such as recent M&A activities and key developments. Once the profiling and prioritization of the targets was complete, it allowed us to estimate high-level valuation ranges and define potential scenarios for acquisition.
The final step of this project was developing a short-term transaction roadmap for the shortlisted targets that included several components including due diligence approach, communication approach, internal clearance and approval processes, as well internal and external team mobilization plan.
After entering into a thorough due-diligence assessment, the project resulted in the client actually acquiring majority stake in one of two prioritized targets, closely following the project’s prescribed acquisition / transaction roadmap. The acquisition expected to create tangible strategic, financial and market positioning value for both corporates, also paving the way for concrete synergies realization in due course.