Franchise Brands more than doubles in size following latest buyout

Franchise Brands, the franchise company behind brands including Barking Mad and Filta, has more than doubled its revenue for the second year in a row following its latest acquisition.

The Macclesfield-based company revealed that its statutory revenue jumped from just under £70m to £121m in 2023, boosted by its purchase of Pirtek Europe for £210.8m that April.

Franchise, which is AIM listed, said that since the buyout Pirtek had “traded at record levels” and that it continued to “contribute as expected to the group’s results”.

The business achieved a similar doubling in scale the previous year with the acquisition of Filta in March 2022.

But despite achieving significant revenue growth, Franchise saw its pre-tax profits slip from £10m in 2022 to £5m in the year just gone, which it said was down to softer demand in the construction and hire-fleet customer sectors.

Franchise executive chairman Stephen Hemsley said: “The group now operates seven brands in ten countries in the UK, Continental Europe and North America, giving it a more diversified international footprint and range of resilient business services.

“The resilient underlying demand for the Group’s essential reactive services enabled all of its key divisions to achieve record results in 2023, despite some softening in demand in the construction and hire-fleet customer sectors and in used oil prices which has continued into the current year. 

“We see significant growth potential for our principal franchise brands of Pirtek, Metro Rod and Filta, which have small shares of large markets, as we extend their range of services, geographical penetration and cross-selling to our larger customer base.

“This growth potential is supported by our Maximum Potential Model which we use to estimate the potential size of our markets.

“We are progressing well with integrating the Group’s businesses and beginning to share resources internationally, enabled by technology, which will accelerate operational gearing for both us and our franchisees in the coming years.

“This progress will support our medium-term ambitions of growing system sales to c.£600m and Adjusted EBITDA of c.£60m in 2027, and given the group is highly cash-generative, we will continue to de-gear as previously guided, giving me great confidence in the tremendous opportunity ahead.”