Facilities First

Transaction Background

Prior to acquisition by Anchorage in September 2017, Facilities First Australia (FFA) (formerly known as TJS) represented a strong platform with a national presence in the stable but fragmented facilities maintenance and cleaning industry. However, business operations had been restricted by a complicated ownership structure.

Anchorage identified an opportunity to improve and diversify business quality with new contract wins and acquisitions across complementary service lines and sector exposures. Further opportunities to generate efficiencies through investment in business processes and systems were also identified, implemented through Anchorage’s operational improvement program.

Business Overview

FFA provides maintenance services and commercial cleaning for customers across government, education, healthcare, retail, corporate, entertainment, and hospitality sectors. On exit by Anchorage, FFA serviced more than ~2,200 sites across all major Australian cities. FFA operates in all Australian states and territories with a particular strength in NSW and, at exit, employed approximately 2,500 team members.

Turnaround Program

The key aspects of the Anchorage operational improvement program included:

• Transition of the business away from short tenure, single site customers to a high quality, corporate customer base with long tenure contracts

• Growing the higher quality maintenance business, including through winning additional government contracts

• Expanding into new and attractive segments, including healthcare and aged care, through both organic growth and targeted M&A

• Enhancing the operating model through improved site labour management, subcontractor oversite and optimised customer pricing

• Improved operating efficiency and scalability through investment in best-in-class systems, including payroll, rostering, CRM and workplace health and safety 

Financial Performance

Collectively, the turnaround initiatives resulted in a ~65% increase in revenue and a near doubling of normalised EBITDA from FY18 to FY20. 

Exit

FFA was successfully sold to Serco Group plc in January 2021.