M&A Strategy
& Transaction Support

We work closely with corporate clients and private equity (PE) firms around the world to develop and execute business strategies and due diligence related to M&A activity.

Focusing on everything from new PE investment platforms and “game changing” corporate acquisitions to tactical tuck-ins, we help clients align their M&A strategy with business and market opportunities, and execute buy-side due diligence to mitigate risk and move confidently and aggressively toward an acquisition decision.

We pre-position a new owner for success, accelerated value creation, and efficient integration.

For Private Equity firms, we:

Develop and refine industry-specific investment theses
Evaluate and prioritize investment targets and navigate processes
Conduct buyside due diligence
Define and execute 100-day plans
Develop and execute Post Merger Integration (PMI) strategies
Conduct sellside due diligence

For Corporate clients, we:

Evaluate portfolios and identify white spaces
Define value-creating M&A strategy
Identify and screen prospective targets
Due Diligence the target’s business risks, opportunities, and synergies
Rigorously execute deals and rapidly capitalize on integration opportunities

Our M&A Strategy and Transaction Support Services

Acquisition Strategy and Prioritization

The road to successful corporate M&A strategy and execution is riddled with potholes – we carefully align M&A strategies and roadmaps to overarching corporate strategy and priorities. Avascent drives acquisition strategies to optimize shareholder returns, position companies for future opportunities and expansion, and reinforce the core differentiators and value propositions to existing customers.

An effective M&A strategy requires a proactive, systematic and comprehensive approach to identifying and prioritizing potential targets. Avascent works with management and corporate development teams to develop bespoke, custom tools and processes to transform reactionary and static M&A decision making, to a dynamic, living approach to enable success and mitigate risk.

Investment Thesis Development and Execution

Continuously expanding private capital pools, increasingly mercurial markets, industries with significant knowledge barriers to entry – private equity firms face a host of new challenges in targeting new industries and segments for investment theses. Avascent works closely with private equity and principal investors to develop thoughtful investment strategies focusing on unique opportunity segments, targeting specific businesses, building action plans and investment justifications, and ultimately executing the vision.

100-Day Plan and Value Acceleration

For private equity owners, time is money, and value creation can be a slow process. During the post-exclusivity pre-close window, Avascent works closely with the new ownership team in developing a 100-Day plan to define the clear value drivers of the business, identify potential levers for near-term cash flow improvement while highlighting and targeting long-term value creation opportunities through more complex operational change and improvements and strategic redirection. Avascent’s methodology, tools and approaches can accelerate growth and value creation from Day-1 of ownership all the way through a successful exit.

Buyside Due Diligence

With every M&A opportunity comes risk and opportunity. Through the high volume of due diligence work conducted every year, Avascent has extensive best practices and approaches for helping buyers uncover the critical risk and opportunity elements of a target by defining the target’s differentiation, contextualizing the business through the lenses of market and industry value chains, qualifying and quantifying the business outlook, and defining ways to optimize upside outcomes while mitigating downside risk. Avascent’s thorough and thoughtful approach allows private equity and corporate clients to differentiate their own bidding strategy, drive aggressively towards decisions, and pre-position for post-close success.

Post-Merger Integration (PMI)

Maximizing the impact of a thoughtfully executed acquisition strategy requires timely focus on capturing deal synergies without “breaking the business.” As each deal is invariably unique, selecting the appropriate mix of tools, resources, and best practices is critical to developing an effective approach to transition. We can adapt an approach that fits the unique aspects of the client’s deal and then customizes and executes an integration plan that captures synergy while sustaining business-as-usual operations.

Sellside Positioning and Due Diligence

The strategy for optimizing exit value in a transaction begins as early as day one of ownership. As a leading strategic advisor in aerospace, defense and government, Avascent provides a highly differentiated approach to helping ownership teams (corporate, founder, private equity) develop and execute a strategy and business narrative to create a unique and valuable business and maximize valuation. Through pre-deal business strategy and forecast development, pipeline refinement and optimization, buyer positioning strategies, and ultimately commercial vendor due diligence (VDD), Avascent helps owners unlock the true value of their business.

Divestitures

As market conditions, customer requirements and competitive dynamics change, clients must continue to evolve and transform their businesses not only through “addition” but also “subtraction.” Through our proprietary divestiture evaluation techniques and tools, Avascent assists clients in identifying what parts of their businesses are most critical vs. portions which may be non-core and optimal for divestiture for value optimization.