Nick Connors takes on the big guns

Scaling up through acquisition is a challenge few owner managers are prepared to tackle. Spurring on Nick Connors, managing director of Tekenable, was the feeling he was running out of time.

“We thought that making acquisitions was only for big companies,” says Connors (57), who established the venture in 2002 with CTO Peter Rose (53). “However, growing organically takes a long time. We had been building the company for the previous 18 years and I wasn't sure if I had another 18 years in me.”

In September, Tekenable effected the acquisition of peer company Greenfinch Technology, owned by Dermot Reid (46) and Brendan Thomas (41). Tekenable bolted together the government's Covid-19 track-and-trace programme while recently, Greenfinch has been assembling a new software platform for the Dublin Airport Authority.

Account filings show that for 2019, Tekenable had year-end trade debtors of €500,000 and net current assets of €1m. The corresponding figures for Greenfinch were €540,000 and €780,000. The companies had similar staff complements of c.30 people.

In a bid to escape the incremental confinement of organic growth, Connors signed up with Capnua, the M&A advisory boutique led by Paul Keenan. “Paul made us ask ourselves how we were going to grow our business without damaging it,” Connors recalls.

“We didn't have full sight of our profitability and our day-to-day management of

Nick Connors, MD of Tekenable

finances. Once we had the template in place for mapping finances across the operation, we knew exactly what everything cost, the margin we would make over a certain period of time, and if we were losing or making money.”

The nuts and bolts of the acquisition almost fell into place, as both companies were targeting the same sort of clients. In December 2019, the two companies had casual discussions about the possibility of forming a joint venture to pitch for larger government and corporate work together in competition with much larger players.

“As time went on, the conversation went more towards us acquiring their business,” says Connors.

“Greenfinch are delivering very good projects with excellent clients but they didn’t have the structures and controls in place that we have. We know that by applying our templates we can improve their profitability.”