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With a dynamic buy-and-build strategy and seven acquisitions, EMERAM's portfolio company Officium consolidates the market for submetering service providers. Revenues and earnings increase significantly.

Just in time for the beginning of the second quarter, it has been achieved: Officium has successfully completed its seventh acquisition within a relatively short period of time. The portfolio company of the investment company EMERAM has successfully expanded into Thuringia and once again increased its regional presence. With its previous acquisitions, the company had already entered the regions of Berlin, Brandenburg, Lower Saxony and Lower Franconia, among others, and strengthened its position in Saxony. With this expansion, Officium successfully expanded its position as a leading independent submetering and energy service provider for the metering and billing of water and heat for the housing industry within a short period of time.

Officium was founded in 2020 as a platform investment by funds advised by EMERAM. In the first step, the company acquired the metering service provider Tenié and Gores, based in Wesel (North Rhine-Westphalia) and Schwarzenberg (Saxony), in December of the same year. "Due to the strong customer service and the motivated employees, the company is truly unique. This was a strong basis for the successive development of further regions," explains Stephan Kiermeyer, Managing Director of Officium.

Comprehensive growth strategy
Parallel to this, he developed a comprehensive growth strategy together with EMERAM. Dr. Alexis Tran-Viet, partner at EMERAM, explains: "As a business development partner, we see ourselves as an outsourced staff unit that supports the management in the development of the company. The portfolio companies can use this know-how - especially in the six areas of competence strategy development, organisational design, HR management, Operational Excellence, ESG and digitalisation - as needed.

In addition to the acquisitions and their integration, Kiermeyer and his team implemented numerous projects in 2021: A Finance Director was appointed for the first time and a reporting system for more transparency was implemented at the same time. As part of the digitalisation process, Officium introduced a new billing system and harmonised the systems of the various acquired metering service providers. Parallel to this, synergies in purchasing were realised and the merchandise management system was optimised and reorganised. "Our goal is clear: In addition to acquisitions and organic growth, we also intend to exploit synergies and increase efficiency, for example in IT and processes. We also understand the importance of our local companies, the high quality of service and the proximity to our customers," explains Kiermeyer. "Moreover, we are firmly committed to the specific brand names, which are well established in the respective regions."

Kiermeyer and Tran-Viet are pleased with the results of the first year: both turnover and earnings increased significantly. With the successful first acquisition in the new business year, this growth course should continue in 2022. "Officium has established itself as an attractive platform for entrepreneurs who are interested in a succession solution for their company. Therefore, our buy-and-build strategy is attracting a lot of interest," says Kiermeyer. Also on the strategic agenda for 2022: further digitalisation and the launch of additional services - to increase the "digital dividend".

Outlook
Tran-Viet considers the market for submetering services, which is worth almost two billion euros, to be extremely attractive: "Besides some very large providers, there are still numerous local service providers. Therefore, we are consistently implementing our buy-and-build strategy with the objective of building up another strong provider that offers customers the highest service quality. In addition, further opportunities are presented by increasing digitalisation, among other things in the context of the new heating cost regulation." The trend towards increasing smart home and smart metering networking also offers attractive growth prospects. Parallel to this, the business model offers stable, recurring revenues thanks to long-term contracts - this ensures planning security and thus enables targeted investments in the future. In addition: "With the digital, monthly measurement of consumption, companies like Officium contribute to mastering the energy transition - transparency is an important way and helps to plan energy efficiency renovations," explains Kiermeyer. This includes the mandatory intra-year consumption information (UVI) in properties that have remotely measurable metering technology since the beginning of the year.