Packaging biz Winson Group hunts for new owner, PwC hired

afr.com:

Family-owned printing, packaging and labelling business Winson Group has its sell-side adviser PwC telling potential buyers to think about $208 million revenue this financial year as its founding family looks for an exit.

Street Talk understands PwC has reached out to a small group of prospective buyers in the recent weeks. It’s early days, with the sale expected to be run as a bespoke process instead of a traditional two-part auction.

Winson has two divisions – Insignia and Signet. Paul Harris

The preference is for a 100 per cent sale of the business, which has 35,000 clients on its books including the likes of Mecca, Guzman Y Gomes, Aldi, Kmart, Asahi and Super Retail Group. It is expected to grow revenue from $150 million in the 2020 financial year to $208 million by 2024, implying about 9 per cent compounded annual growth rate. EBITDA stood at $16.6 million in the last year and is expected to be $15.2 million by 2024.

Despite the preference for a complete sale, the sell-side adviser is also open to taking bids for Winson’s two divisions – Insignia and Signet – separately.

The bigger of the two, Signet, is a distributor of packaging products and supplies. It has 32,000 customers (of the 35,000 group total) and pulled in 75 per cent of the group revenue and made $12.1 million EBITDA. Nearly 60 per cent to 70 per cent of its sales are made online.

It manufactures around 25 per cent of its products locally, although the company had hoped to increase that in coming years.

The other half of the business, Insignia, provides in-line labelling solutions to about 3300 customers to the tune of $49 million revenue and $5.6 million EBITDA in the last financial year. Potential buyers were told that, while the smaller of the two,