Accounting firm Kelly Partners bankers up for strategic review
ASX-listed accounting group Kelly Partners has hit the ground running on its mooted strategic review, drafting in Jefferies Australia to consider capital structure and ownership options to solve its valuation blues.
Kelly Partners chief executive Brett Kelly still owns 50 per cent of the ASX-listed business.
Street Talk can reveal the New York-headquartered investment bank has begun preliminary work on drumming up a deal for Kelly Partners, which announced its strategic review on Friday as it handed down full-year results.
Management said the review would seek to close the gap between Kelly Partners’ market capitalisation and its intrinsic value. Options under consideration include a potential take-private deal or shipping out its sharemarket listing to the United States.
Kelly Partners debuted on the ASX in 2017 with a $45 million market capitalisation and had grown to $210 million at Friday’s close. That’s not bad as far as share price performance goes. But clearly founder and chief executive officer, Brett Kelly, who still controls just over half of the business, has his eye on a more promising future for the firm.
Analysts reckon Kelly Partners would do well in both a take-private scenario and one where it is listed in the United States. It has better fundamentals than NYSE-listed comparable, Cbiz, which trades at mid-teens EBITDA multiples and is capitalised at $US4 billion ($6.2 billion) on the exchange.
And the sector’s not short on private equity interest. Only last week, global accounting firm BDO scored a $US1.3 billion debt deal from buyout giant Apollo Global Management. There’s also non-audit advisory firm CFGI, which attracted a bid from CVC Capital Partners at a $US1.85 billion valuation two years ago.
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