Fueling the Next Phase of an Energy Company’s Growth Through IPO Readiness
Challenge
An energy services provider offering innovative solutions to manage energy spend and achieve carbon neutrality was considering an initial public offering (IPO). The company needed help assessing its IPO readiness and addressing gaps in its finance and accounting organization, including capabilities, processes, data and reporting, technology enablement, and internal controls.
“In preparing to go public, it’s critical for companies to review their finance and accounting organization, including structure, processes, controls, data, and systems. We helped our client perform comprehensive diagnostics and develop a roadmap to guide the company forward, enabling the client to become public company-ready with scalability to support future growth.” – Greg Carlson, Managing Director, Riveron
How we helped
As company leadership and investors explored the optimal path to the public markets, Riveron was engaged to conduct an initial high-level readiness assessment. This resulted in a technology upgrade to Oracle NetSuite, with our team’s support on the system selection, and the hiring of professionals for critical leadership positions, including CFO, CAO, and VP of Finance.
As the path to the public markets became clearer, Riveron was re-engaged to lead a more comprehensive diagnostic of the company’s public company readiness, with a focus on its finance and accounting capabilities. Our team conducted more than 25 working sessions with key stakeholders from the finance and accounting organization, leadership team, and board of directors. With input from the board and executive leadership, we formalized the guiding principles and requirements, which served as the foundation for a public company- ready finance and accounting function.
We analyzed the current state of the organizational structure, processes and controls, systems and data, and the roles and capabilities that support the finance and accounting organization. Through this analysis, we documented more than 100 observations of pain points and areas of opportunity for improvement to achieve public company readiness, including process and controls improvements, technology upgrades, data cleansing, definition of roles, and the upskilling of critical roles across the organization.
Using this information, our team developed a roadmap to guide the company on its path to operating as a public company. The plan prioritized 25+ initiatives to close gaps, meet requirements, and enable the energy provider to operate at scale. We then led the transformation program using a phased approach focused on stabilization, optimization, maturation, and ultimately IPO execution.
In addition to supporting the company with achieving IPO readiness, our team also assisted with several other critical initiatives. These workstreams included performing financial and tax due diligence on multiple acquisition targets, purchase price accounting and integration services for acquisitions, and accounting for income tax provisions.
Results
With Riveron’s support, the energy services provider transformed its finance and accounting function and helped clear the path for an eventual IPO and operating as a public company. The company is benefiting from leading practice management reporting and business intelligence; high-performing teams; finance and accounting processes that will stand up to public company standards; the ability to leverage existing technology to streamline downstream processes, such as transaction processing and management reporting; and deployment of scalable technology platforms to aid future growth. As the company continues with final IPO preparations, our partnership continues as well with additional workstreams underway.