Goldman coaches core-plus funds on $80m-a-year Ventura

afr.com:

Up-for-sale Ventura, one of the country’s largest bus operators, makes $300 million of revenue, has an “infrastructure-like risk profile” which is expected to get core-plus funds’ wheels spinning, and could serve as a platform to “to unlock national expansion”.

That’s according to a sale flyer in front of prospective investors as part of a Goldman Sachs-run auction which got under way earlier this month. Ventura, owned by the same family that founded it in 1924, makes $80 million at the earnings line, runs at a 25 per cent EBITDA margin, and is expected to fetch close to $1 billion given interest from core-plus investors in similar assets.

Ventura Bus Lines owner Andrew Cornwall has agreed to sell his business into public hands. Josh Robenstone

Goldman points out Ventura is the largest bus operator in Victoria with around 530 of Melbourne’s 1205 total routes. The company, according to the sale flyer dubbed Project Ninja, says Ventura has an “infrastructure-like risk profile from near-100 per cent control of key asserts” and “true incumbency on key metropolitan bus service contracts”.

There’s also “strong EBITDA margins enabled by cost discipline and industry-leading planning team” and a “portfolio of low-risk growth options, augmented by macro growth, increased utilisation of charter assets and new contract wins,” according to the circulated material.

Ventura has around 44 per cent of the Melbourne public bus market, and 55 per cent of school routes in the city, holding three of the five largest bus contracts and striking an agreement at the heart of plans to electrify the network. This is because it holds the metropolitan bus service contract in Melbourne’s north which is intended to be the first full-electrified region