Chris Small: ABC Business Sales CEO on the rising number of people looking to purchase businesses

Now is the time to sell your business. 

According to ABC Business Sales, the number of buyers enquiring about purchases is up 30%. 

Demand is currently outstripping supply, as new listings are down 10% on last year. 

CEO Chris Small told Mike Hosking much of the interest is led by migrants, and hospitality, services, and construction are the three sectors people are primarily looking to buy in. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to a podcast from news Talk zed B.
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Speaker 2 (00:16):
The business of sales of business seems to be booming.
Our buyer inquiries are up thirty percent, listings down ten percent.
So you've got to demand out stripping supply issue there,
I guess. Chris Small is the CEO of ABC Business
Sales and as well as Chris, morning to you.

Speaker 3 (00:30):
Well, Mike, hey, you don't very well.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Indeed, this has been happening for a while. We've had
you on several times out so this is this is
a thing, This is a trend. Is that fair?

Speaker 3 (00:37):
Yeah? Absolutely, we just we just had a record month
in May. We've had forty two business sales in May,
which is the most we've ever had. So it's, as
you right to point out in your first sort of statement,
their demand is sort of well, I almost call it
out of control. It's the highest we've ever seen in
business sales history. Currently.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Who are these people and what do they want?

Speaker 3 (00:59):
Yep? Great question. So pretty much led by the migrants.
So is a huge ethnic element to this or a
lot of Indian, Chinese and Philippina are coming to New
Zealand and wanting to buy businesses, and then if we
do it, we've do a sector analysis. You'll see hospitality, services,
and construction are probably the three leading sectors that they're

(01:22):
looking to buy it like, they would make up over
fifty as well as retails. You've got hospitality thirty percent,
retail eighteen percent, services fifteen percent, so that's over fifty
percent from those three sectors.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
So explain to me, then, because the number of people
coming to the country is starting to tail off, would
you then expect the number of people looking to purchase
businesses starting to tail off? Then if it's all immigration.

Speaker 3 (01:43):
Good good question. What we're seeing is that people are
still arriving in New Zealand. From what we can see,
those people arriving in New Zealand are largely Asian migrants,
and the people that are leaving New Zealand are probably
largely European parkiha going to Europe for their own way.
So you're sort of the people arriving and still wanting
to buy businesses and the people leaving the probably people

(02:04):
who would never buy businesses in the first place. So
just the shape of the popularation is trending towards I
guess a certain element to Wild's best business ownership with
it becasus the young ones leaving would never buy a
business because they don't have the money currently.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
No, exactly. So the interesting thing for me is this
unemployment side of the equation. So immigration is a cultural thing.
They don't want to work for somebody else, they want
to work for themselves. Fully get that as an unemployed person. Though,
if I'm looking then all of a sudden at a business,
do I know what I'm doing?

Speaker 3 (02:33):
Yeah, they're pretty good. I mean everyone's obviously got obviously
we provide advice. People have got their own accountants and lawyers.
But it's becoming a real thing that where people are
coming to us and going you know what, I'm sick
of working for a big corporate. It's too woke or
it's too annoying. I don't like my boss, and I
want that financial freedom with Actually, if they work really hard,
you get rewarded. If you don't work hard, you' obviously

(02:55):
can be a bet of trouble. Versus in corporate New Zealand,
you can probably work pretty hard and not necessarily get
rewarded for the hours you put in.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
If you've got a good business a going concern. See,
I mean, how many of your stock are kind of
it could go oh well if you did it better,
versus it's not a great business anyway, versus this thing's
booming and it'll sell them three minutes.

Speaker 3 (03:16):
Look, majority of what we sell is all profitable because
no one buys a businesses that's making a loss. So
we always say that to people where they come and
see us that you know, there's no point taking us
to market because no one's going to want to buy it.
There are exceptions to the rule, but to the majority
of what we sell are full going concerns, which which
are which are highly profitable and that's why they're selling.
Otherwise there's no point taking it to market.

Speaker 2 (03:38):
Are the banks on board with the stuff? Is there
money for this kind of activity if you want.

Speaker 3 (03:42):
To absolutely, yeah, we'll look at the bank's are funny
things that they love. We all know they love making money,
and given the recent decline and property transactions, they've really
moved towards what we call sne business and have been
very very happy to accommodate transactions. You know, but they're
they're sensible. They're not going to lend to bad bad transactions,
but if it's a sensible transaction, the banks are absolutely

(04:03):
absolutely there for it.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
Do you do a sauna and cold plunge every day?

Speaker 3 (04:08):
Yes? I do? Who told you that?

Speaker 2 (04:09):
I know? I know everything, Chris, and you would speak
well of it and you're a better person for the experience.

Speaker 3 (04:16):
Ah, I could not speak more, Heil. I've been doing
it for five years and it is probably the best
thing I do in my twenty four hours each day. Yeah,
couldn't recommend it more.

Speaker 2 (04:25):
Good on you mate, Well go well, we'll see you
sayin Chris Small, who's the ABC Business Sales CEO. Cold
plunge and a sauna each and every day, you can't
go wrong.

Speaker 1 (04:34):
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