In his previous role as Associate, Corporate Development & Investor Relations, Big Rock Brewery, Spencer directly supported the CEO and Senior Leadership Team in driving on both organic and inorganic strategic projects across the business. Spencer owned the corporate forecast model and was the primary liaison in all the company’s communications with financial stakeholders, building and maintaining investor presentations and the development of related press releases and public disclosures.
In another previous role as Portfolio Manager – Diversified Industries, ATB Financial, Spencer managed and assisted in building a leveraged finance portfolio valued at over $500M across a multitude of industries including emerging technologies, aviation, and manufacturing.
We asked Spencer about his journey as a CBV, including his takeaways from the CBV Program of Studies. Here are some of the highlights from our conversation, including a #FunFact.
How has the CBV Designation supported your career development?
The CBV obviously gave me a good deal of tangible skills, but the one thing it gave me right away was the intangible of knowing you have the confidence as a subject matter expert to skillfully approach problems and challenges. I’ve greatly benefitted from this.
My background is in investment and corporate banking so to transfer from a very finance-focused world over to business valuation and corporate development taught me to obviously appreciate key accounting principles, but I then learned how to apply those principles from a finance and company-specific perspective. Clearly, valuation can be used in so many contexts, but from a corporate development perspective – whether the focus is on organic or inorganic growth– my CBV designation has given me a great deal of insight and rigor around how to build out and template information to support truly well-informed business decisions. This input is viewed as highly valuable by the company I work for.
Can you share a particularly challenging, yet interesting valuation analysis that made you realize you had chosen the right career path?
Last year, we went through a period of exclusivity with a company we were looking to acquire – a reputable vodka soda brand in Canada – and the deal ultimately fell through. Brands such as this will oftentimes come to companies like ours for our production capabilities. (Many of these companies are just brands with no production assets of their own – they develop the recipes and then turn to companies like us to oversee production and in some cases, distribution.) For this transaction, we were down to the eleventh hour and there was still a sizeable discrepancy in the purchase price between the respective parties. What the CBV designation really helped me with was analyzing key risks in the transaction and communicating to stakeholders, including our bankers and their bankers. When we took a step back and sensitized certain key risks we saw in the potential acquisition, we gained a lot of confidence in the number and structure we were comfortable with.
Ultimately, the deal fell through and in part thanks to my CBV designation, we were able to make a well-informed and – in hindsight, what we still feel was – the correct decision.
What differences do you see in your current role as compared to your previous roles?
I see myself somewhat as an in-house banker. The key difference from my previous roles in finance is that I now leverage my understanding and experience in capital markets and banking and I now apply it from a company-first perspective. So, corporate development for me is that sweet spot where it has allowed me to do the work I like to do, which is rooted in banking and valuation and, at the same time, it’s with this greater understanding of the company I’m working for, including their strategic objectives, that I look to create value however possible. How do our planned initiatives tie back into our one-year, three-year and five-year plan and then ultimately how do all of these moving pieces tie back to our positioning as a public company from a “maximizing shareholder value” perspective? From that, I put my investor relations hat on and determine how we best communicate this to the market.
Do you have any tips for people looking to become a CBV?
Know what your muscle is, make sure you flex it, but at the same time, focus on increasing your understanding of what you don’t know. The best growth comes from times of discomfort.
Also, do the practice exams and show up to the webinars. They’re helpful.
#FunFact
I’m 6’8” tall and after high school and before beginning university, I was a hockey goaltender for two years playing for several junior hockey teams spanning Alberta and British Columbia. The last team I played on was the Calgary Royals.