Reinforcing a growing trend, private equity firm Sentinel Capital Partners has acquired UBEO Business Services, a provider of printer, copier, and related office equipment.
Financial terms were not disclosed and office equipment deals can be difficult to value, but UBEO has a sizable business. The San Antonio, Texas-based company provides document management equipment and related services to 6,000 midsize businesses, schools, and municipalities. UBEO has more than 225 employees and manages an installed base of around 20,000 machines. Key partners include Konica Minolta, Kyocera, Ricoh, and Xerox.
In a prepared statement, UBEO President and CEO Jim Sheffield said:
"We are very proud of the reputation we have built," he says. "UBEO outperforms its competition in the service categories that our customers value most – technical capability, service quality, and on-time delivery. Partnering with Sentinel well positions us for our next phase of profitable growth."
Sentinel Partner Scott Perry says UBEO has a stable, highly recurring business model, high margins, and strong free cash flow characteristics. "As the largest independent dealer in Texas, UBEO is a scalable platform and ideal for consolidating its highly fragmented industry," he says. “We are very pleased to partner with a highly experienced, talented, and strongly committed management team that has a proven record of profitable growth."
Sentinel History, Office Equipment M&A
Sentinel is known for investing in management buyouts, recapitalizations, corporate divestitures, and going-private transactions of established businesses with EBITDA of up to $65 million.
Office equipment companies have been a hot commodity lately, with a number of notable M&A deals in recent years. Sharp recently bought a number of assets from Arista Business Imaging Solutions. QRX Technology Group acquired Kerr Norton at the end of 2016, and Loffler Companies bought out Copier Business Solutions a month before that. Then there are companies like Global Imaging Systems (GIS), which has made a string of acquisitions in the sector.
