Information for Sellers

Kids & Company is a leading child care and early learning provider with over 100 locations across Canada. Founded in 2002, we are a reputable provider, with strong partnerships with employers who provide child care – and other family care solutions – as a benefit to their employees.

We grow both by acquisition and new build. When we look at an acquisition, we consider child care providers that have a solid reputation in their community, a decent facility and some formal accounting to show their enrollment numbers, cash flow and income over previous periods. We focus on locations in urban areas that serve an engaged community without excessive competition; currently we have locations in most Canadian provinces. We consider single-location and multi-location brands and operations run under a variety of structures. We are not necessarily concerned if your location doesn’t presently look or feel like a Kids & Company facility.

Kids & Company is Canada’s leading corporate-sponsored provider of child care and early learning. We have a proven track record of excellent operations, high-quality care, and mutually-beneficial business deals. Although we are a growing business and can skip the steps for financing that smaller buyers need, we are still very entrepreneurial and agile in making decisions. Partnering with us as you prepare to exit your business will give you peace of mind as we deal transparently and are experienced in providing flexible structures and smooth transitions to sellers.

If you are ready to have conversations about selling your business, it’s best to have an idea of its value. There are several ways to approach valuation but in the child care industry, the simplest way is to determine your net profit each year, as far back as possible. These numbers don’t have to be formally audited to begin discussions, but will need to be verified at some point. Net profit will be multiplied by a market capitalization rate reflected by current industry standards to come to a selling price; usually this would be around 3 in child care. Another way to look at the valuation of your business is to assign a value to what each child care space in your operations is worth (based on the average net profit per space) and then multiply that by the licensing maximum.

One of the benefits we can offer as a buyer is a lot of flexibility to structure a deal with terms that work best for you. You may want a share sale (all parts of business sold via share structure including the name) or an asset sale (pick and choose assets to include in the sale). Depending on your personal situation, we can accommodate either.

We are both large enough to have the resources available and small enough to be agile in decision-making to make sales happen very quickly when needed. However, we also are open to longer-term relationships with potential sellers who are working on a longer-term exit strategy or would like an opportunity to build net profits in advance of a sale. On average, we complete sales within 3 to 8 months from initial conversations.

As we have a strong operational team in place, and a proven history of acquisitions and smooth transitions, we rarely require the lengthy transition  periods that other buyers may want from existing operators.

Kids & Company highly values teachers, Directors and support staff who demonstrate commitment to their work and growth. It is never in our best interest to make big changes regarding staff during a transition, so we invest a lot in the existing relationships and any necessary training. We will work closely with departing owners to understand the strengths of long-term staff and work on a smooth shift during the sale.

Do not stress about working with a broker or middleman before coming to us. We encourage operators to compile basic financial information and consider their ideas on valuation, sale structure, timing, and unique features of their business, and then reach out directly to have an initial conversation. Below is a basic form we encourage you to complete if you’d like to hear from our in-house acquisition team. Please note that any discussions are in complete confidence; we would never reach out to anyone at your child care location(s) or stakeholders without express permission from the initial contact.