PieLAB's 2023 Update

It's been a busy year for PieLAB – we welcomed four new businesses to our portfolio, added three new team members, and met a lot of great businesses, and owners, along the way.

Here’s what happened at PieLAB in the 2023 calendar year:

We invested in leading WA exercise physiology business ABSOLUTE BALANCE Exercise Physiology Group . From the start, the team at Absolute Balance have impressed us with their unwavering commitment to achieving great outcomes for their clients and patients.

We also invested in leading fire services business Commercial Fire Group . We’re excited about the industry experience and commercial acumen they bring to our fire services group.

Throughout the year we made bolt-on acquisitions for our portfolio companies, Smoke Alarm Testing Services , and Stansure Strata . All of these have brought with them numerous benefits – whether they be geographic expansion, clients, or team members. We continue to look for further acquisitions within our existing portfolio companies.

PieLAB investors had the opportunity to continue the journey with Detector Inspector following the exit from our first fund, rolling their interests into the Safe Haven Growth Fund and we have begun the next phase of the Detector Inspector story.

We held our Annual Investor Day in Brisbane in July. On the day we heard from our portfolio company CEOs, our?Chairperson Marcus Simpson on private equity markets and Jeff McKee on his learnings after two decades with the world's leading acquirer of SMEs, Constellation Software. We announced that Jeff would be joining the board of our flagship investment vehicle the PieLAB Council Capital Fund where we acquire profitable recurring revenue SMEs.

The PieLAB team grew, with Matthew Burrows , Michael Sanders and Richelle Frechtling all joining.

We held the first of our ‘Business Builder Blueprint’ series. We had over 20 attendees hear our Managing Partner, Chris Rolls , present some great insights derived from his research into pricing, and why, thinking more strategically about how to price products and services can have a huge impact on business performance.

These events are always great opportunities for our team, and portfolio companies, to get together and share their own experiences on a particular topic. We have already scheduled further dates for 2024.

We raised fresh capital into the PieLAB Council Capital Fund our flagship SME investment vehicle. This capital raising was heavily supported by our existing shareholders, along with adding some new ones. We're proud to have them on board.

What's in store for PieLAB in 2024:

Anecdotally, we are continuing to see a tougher financing environment for businesses, which is impacting the close rate on deals in the SME sector. This is good news for us, because PieLAB's committed fund focused on SMEs gives vendors confidence that we have capital available making us a preferred buyer through a sale process.

Looking ahead, we are in advanced discussions with some great businesses that we look forward to joining us in 2024.?

We are also continuing to add to the resources that we offer our portfolio companies. Starting early in the year, we will roll out some exclusive content and learning opportunities to support our teams to continue to do what they do best.

We feel we’ve achieved a lot in 2023 and are excited about continuing to grow and partner with new businesses in 2024. We remain focused on identifying great SMEs and supporting them in their future endeavours.

To this end, if you know of an?Australian-based?business looking for a staged?or?full exit?with a history of?earnings between $1m-$5m, please let us know - we would love to have a conversation.?

We hope you and your families have a great holiday season and look forward to speaking with you next year.