EnergyOne Sees Good Synergy in eZ-nergy Acquisition
A while ago, I spoke with Shaun Ankers, CEO of Energy One about its acquisition of eZ-nergy. He started out on a cautionary note talking about how in a number of instances, valuations and deals were simply too expensive, in his opinion, primarily as a result of strong private equity interest and that Energy One, a public company, was a more cautious acquirer. “We have to be careful and go slowly as we don’t compete with private equity on an ‘at any price’ basis. For PE and VC it’s all about money whereas for us, it has to be about synergy and controlled growth” he told me. “We need to stay focused on our business and we saw in eZ-nergy a complimentary business with a management team that wanted the backing to grow their business to the next level.”
EZ-nergy was already well known to Energy One’s UK-based Contigo entity as they had routinely partnered with each other for several years and therefore an existing relationship existed along with some integration infrastructure. It seemed like a logical choice to us at ComTech as a result. With Contigo strong in the UK and eZ-nergy strong in Europe, there is a good deal of synergy and cross over at work that makes the deal look very strong. “It provides each business with greater access to the market. They can swap and interchange features strengthening each other and the whole entity, and the further diversification of products within the Energy One Group is simply just good business management.”
“We will continue to seek the right sort of partners and acquisitions, the trick is to buy companies that make sense for Energy One,” he said. “One merger (so far) a year feels like a good rhythm and gives us a chance to get everything bedded down. It is key for us to first leverage the eZ-nergy synergies and make sure it is a success.” One recent example of the synergy between parts of Energy One is the adoption of the new VaR module by Contigo in EnTrader as discussed recently with Simon Wheeler, CEO of Contigo. “2 plus 2 really does equal 5 in the merger and acquisition business if it is done correctly. For example, 5-years ago, 90% of our revenues came from selling one product and now it is only 30% of our total revenues, so we have diversified our business, offerings and revenue streams using this approach.”
Another aspect of the eZ-nergy merger, is the fact it offers SaaS and actually performs dispatch and power logistics for its customers. “Contigo also offer 24 by 7 product support services and so now we have an ability to better staff these round the clock services in a follow the sun approach. This is good for our customers and good for our staff.”
For Shaun, the value of doing an acquisition or merger is all in the synergy. ComTech has seen much of the M&A activity in this industry over the last 25-years and many times it was only about customer acquisition and ended in a vendor selling multiple competing platforms in a way that made no sense for anyone. It seems that Energy One has a very different strategy and that is growth through synergy and cross leverage.
