Coffee Break with Jake

This week, Jake Voll pulls together a three-person panel to walk through what an acquisition in the security industry actually looks like from the broker's chair, the banker's chair, and the operator's chair. Colby Monachino of Monachino Partners handles the brokerage side, Jennifer Holloway of CIBC US handles the debt side, and Sean Forrest of Alarm Detection Systems, Inc. handles the buyer side. Between the three of them, they cover the arc from "should I even be looking at this" through LOI, due diligence, close, and the first ninety days after the wire clears.

In this episode, we talk about...

✅ Three reasons Sean pursues acquisitions at Alarm Detection Systems
✅ The "get your own house in order" test before you even start looking
✅ Colby's read on today's market
✅ Jennifer's warning about strategy discipline: have a checkbox on every target
✅ Why RMR lending is a specialty product and your local bank probably can't do it
✅ Margin benchmarks Jennifer looks for
✅ Cash versus bank versus seller financing
✅ Colby's tale of caution on seller financing from the buy side
✅ Why two nearly identical RMR books can get wildly different valuations
✅ Sean's red-flag checklist
✅ The deferred revenue conversation 
✅ Sean's integration advice, from a guy who has made the mistake more than once
✅ Loan covenants after close
✅ Colby's first-90-days trap
✅ Mike Tyson's rule applied to M&A: everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face, so plan on getting punched in the face

Coffee Break With Jake is recorded live every Friday at 11am ET. Join us live or register to attend at https://go.ssandsi.com/coffeebreak