SLP creates advisory group

ST. LOUIS-SLP Capital has taken its expertise in providing due diligence services on acquisitions and recapitalizations and broken it into a separate entity, SLP Advisory Services. The newly created division taps into services SLP has traditionally provided under its financing umbrella. But with more business in the due diligence market, company officials decided it was time for it to stand on its own. "After all the years of doing this for our own accounts and having other capital providers looking at our work, we realized there was a demand for it," said Bill Polk, president of SLP. Joe Thompson, vice president of SLP and a member of the SLP Advisory Services group, concurred. "There are more people in the industry who are recognizing the value of having a third party, or another set of eyes, look at a transaction," he said. In the first four months of this year, the advisory group's business is already more than double that of business for all of last year. Groups using the service include banks, other specialty finance companies, institutional investors and venture capital firms, said Polk. "We've definitely seen it grow in the last 12 months and that helped us come to the decision to break this out into a separate group," said Thompson. Besides looking at a company's RMR and attrition, two of the most requested areas for due diligence, the SLP Advisory Services group can also look at back office operations, such as billing, monitoring and providing customer service. Polk said these services are especially valuable to those who do not deal in the alarm industry on a daily basis. "There are special considerations when you're making investments in the alarm industry," he said. "Experienced players in the alarm industry understand what others coming in for the first time don't see. We're able to spot where the problems are quickly in a company's financial information."