A capital-light consultancy with excellent momentum

Elixirr presents itself as a new breed of management consultancy. It used a recent ad campaign to lampoon the industry’s jargon, swagger and reliance on under-experienced Oxbridge graduates, and continually stresses its “challenger” credentials. While it suffers from some of its peers’ breathless fervour, describing its workforce as “creative storytellers”, “brave contrarians” and “probing observers”, its genuine promise makes this just about palatable. 

Punching above its weight 

With a market cap of under £250mn, Elixirr is small – even compared with specialist listed consulting peers such as Alpha Financial Markets Consulting (AFM) and XPS Pensions (XPS). However, it benefits from a similarly capital-light business model and excellent momentum. Indeed, according to Investec, Elixirr is the fastest-growing management consultancy in the UK and the third-fastest in Europe. Having increased its market share every year since 2011 and posted organic revenue growth of 18 per cent in 2022, Elixirr has momentum. With an adjusted Ebitda (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) margin at around 30 per cent, it is also profitable.

The company was founded in the aftermath of the financial crash, and originally focused on financial services work, which is Newton’s area of expertise. Around half of group turnover still comes from the sector, but Elixirr is rapidly diversifying, and its 200-strong client base now includes names as varied and big-ticket as Diageo, LVMH, Tesla and Burger King.

The fact that big names are on board suggests this youthful small cap is an increasingly viable alternative to the ‘Big Four’ professional services firms and strategy houses such as McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group and Bain, which together account for almost half of the market. 

A lot of the people who work at Elixirr cut their teeth in this world, so they know what they’re up against. Newton was formerly a managing partner at Accenture, while chief financial officer Graham Busby worked in Accenture’s ‘global mega-deal’ department. The quality of the wider management team is also encouraging, with former BT chief executive Gavin Patterson acting as non-executive chair.

The big question is whether Elixirr can keep luring talented people away from the corporate behemoths. The group has about 500 consultants but just 21 of them are client-facing partners. As partners generate the biggest invoices and bring in most of the work, swelling their ranks will be crucial for growth. 

In this sense, Elixirr has a lot in common with Keystone Law (KEYS), whose success relies on a team of 400 senior solicitors and which has seen recruitment slow down in recent months. However, while Keystone’s self-employed “principals” take a chunk of what they bill and are enticed by the promise of flexible working, Elixirr depends heavily on share-based compensation.

Management claims that partners can earn 80 per cent more at Elixirr than they could at a big rival firm because, while cash remuneration is lower, the money saved on pay packets is pumped back into the business, fuelling equity returns. 

“By investing £3.2mn in the business over five years and assuming 25 per cent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) share price growth, each partner can achieve an equity return of £7.2mn,” declares Elixirr, which loans new partners £500,000 to buy shares. It concludes that over a five-year period a partner can earn £9mn (including cash remuneration) compared with £5mn at a Big Four firm.  

Non-partners are also strongly equity incentivised via share options and an employee share purchase plan.

On the one hand, this approach makes a lot of sense. One of the big conundrums posed by listed people businesses is how to align the interests of partners with those of external investors. Why would partners want to return profit to shareholders if they could distribute it all among themselves? Elixirr’s focus on equity means everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet. However, its logic falls apart if shares head south and partners watch their pay prospects wither. 

Share dilution is therefore something to watch for. Management stressed that the “value created from our equity incentive schemes far outweighs the potential dilutive effect” and analysts note that there has been no material dilution to the share count since April 2021. As the business keeps scaling up, however, it remains a risk. 

Growing pains 

Organic growth is not Elixirr’s only option, of course. It recently deployed some cash to acquire iOLAP, a US consultancy specialising in data and analytics. The deal makes strategic sense and is reminiscent of Alpha FMC’s Lionpoint purchase. Elixirr now has a sizable presence in the US, home to the world’s biggest consultancy market, and should benefit from plenty of cross-selling opportunities.

It’s not easy to scale up a business at pace however, and Alpha FMC’s recent performance spotlights some of the problems that Elixirr could face. Fears about under-utilised consultants marred Alpha FMC’s latest annual results, where the group cited industry-wide “increased levels of competition as a result of overcapacity”. Its shares have fallen by 25 per cent since the start of the year after a bumper three-year period.   

Elixirr has a more varied client base than Alpha FMC, but it is not immune to market conditions. Staff costs as a percentage of revenues have risen over the past four years, and margins could suffer if work dries up. To make things worse, it is tricky to predict when or if a downturn is coming as contracts only last for four to eight weeks on average, limiting visibility and management’s capacity to plan. 

The firm’s resilience has been tested before, though: in 2020, the group achieved revenue growth of 24 per cent while the consulting market as a whole shrank by 18 per cent. Elixirr’s balance sheet is also reassuringly robust. The group has a net cash position, despite several acquisitions and dividend payments, and operations have proved reliably cash-generative so far: standard payment terms require settlement of invoices within 30 days of receipt, and the majority of trade receivables are less than 31 days old. 

Valuing potential

Elixirr's share price has risen by 165 per cent since its IPO, so potential investors can be forgiven for feeling as though they’ve missed the boat. Small-cap valuations are slippery at the best of times, and the lack of publicly traded consultancies – together with a dearth of analyst coverage – makes valuing Elixirr even harder. However, there does appear to be a disconnect between its growth prospects and its price/earnings (PE) multiple.

Analysis by Investec puts Elixirr on a PE ratio of 15.4 for the 2023 calendar year, despite a forecast sales CAGR for 2022-24 of 17 per cent. By contrast, Alpha FMC is expected to grow by 10 per cent but trades on a PE ratio of 18.1.

Some will argue that Elixirr is cheap because it is small and risky. It has a short track record on the public market and is not widely covered by analysts. It is also exposed to partner and client exits, and its top three clients account for about a fifth of sales.

On balance, however, the risk-reward balance looks enticing. As a capital-light sector challenger, Elixirr’s momentum could well persist for years to come. Taken together, profitable growth, a burgeoning client base and US expansion plans make for an intoxicating mixture.