Organic growth is critical to ECI. It’s the number one thing that we look for in companies that we back and it’s the number one thing that generates returns for us and for our investors and whatever we can do in in terms of finding those markets finding those companies helping them accelerate their growth continue that growth that is absolutely intrinsic to what we do. What we’re looking for are companies that are operating in sectors that have got strong underlying tailwinds behind them where those companies have then executed well at delivering you know 30 35% growth and and when we see that we get really excited. In some instances it might be that you know we’re just providing an advisory fairly light touch approach for the management team because we’ve defined what that that plan is or it might be that the management team need some help on the ground and we very much then are are in the business of rolling our sleeves up and helping them execute on that plan. Last year ECI Partners were identified as the number one private equity investor in Europe in terms of driving organic growth that was through Gain.pro who were doing an independent assessment across the industry and we were absolutely delighted with that. There are number of examples across the portfolio where we’ve had a significant impact and helped the management team drive organic growth. So one example that springs to mind is the work that we did with the sales team at Travel Chapter. They are the premium provider in their market but were seeing some price erosion risk and essentially what we helped the sales team do is position themselves more effectively as a premium provider and have the confidence to get on the front foot, be proud of the fact that they were the premium provider and be able to articulate the value that they bring to their customers. What we saw for Travel Chapter was an increase in in bookings despite that competitive pressure and a significant improvement in margin due to the improved capability of the sales team to both position and negotiate effectively. In this lower growth environment that we’re operating in probably post the post-Covid bubble, that was created in 2021 and 2022 I think most companies are having to find better ways at identifying the great organic growth opportunities that are out there and that’s targeting the right customers having the right proposition, recognising where you’ve got a pricing opportunity and customers have become a lot more discerning and so we all have to sharpen our own engines and targeting in order to to deliver that growth so I think that has become more challenging and therefore the focus on being able to have a toolkit and some experience around how to drive that growth has become much more important. Organic growth is critical to driving exit value not only does it deliver in our experience over 50% of our actual return it has an amplifier effect because it then leads to an improved multiple often whenever we sell if we’ve been able to demonstrate organic growth we can demonstrate there’s a market opportunity we can demonstrate to the next investor that there’s lots more to come and that ultimately comes through in exit value.
