Disclaimer: Unless noted otherwise, views and analysis expressed here are the author's own and based on public sources. The article is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. This is not financial advice. Please consult a professional for investment decisions.

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It’s Dry January - at least for some of our readers. Reason enough to talk about the collision repair industry. You’d think that an industry with fundamentals this attractive (mission critical service, recession proof demand, AI “hedge” etc.) would have succumbed to consolidation a long time ago. 

But no! 

In the UK, there are over 1,800 sites churning out together an estimated £5B (c.$7B) in revenues. Steer Automotive, the market leader, has a 10% share with 200+ sites. The runner-up Fix Auto is half the size (it’s a franchise network). 

Why is that?    

Time and again, Private Equity firms have been turned off by a myriad of challenges. The lack of transparency on parts provenance. The constant squeeze on margins exerted by the insurance industry (top 5 car insurance companies control over half of the UK market). To top it off, the chronic skills shortage.  

And then Richard Steer and his team showed up. 

Since 2018, Richard has grown his eponymous rollup, Steer Automotive, from 4 sites to 200+ nationally, and from £10M (c.$13M) to over £600M (c.$800M) in revenue - all the while running on double-digit EBITDA margins:

Steer Automotive was sold to Private Equity twice: in 2021 and 2024. Richard’s decision to roll over on both occasions was a clear signal: he’s far from done.  

 Along the way, Steer Automotive unlocked Croesus-like windfalls not only for Richard, but also for the Private Equity firms behind the 2021 buyout: Chiltern Capital and Keyhaven Capital. Chiltern is an Independent Sponsor. Keyhaven is a prominent Indy Sponsor fund-of-funds. 

We estimate that Chiltern made a 14x MOIC on its investment, turning £750K into £10M (including rollover). In just 3 years!

If you’re new to the Indy Sponsor industry, check out our primer: Private Equity professionals are leaving in droves to set up “Independent Sponsors”. What are these - and should you start one? 

Read on to learn about:

1. Richard Steer’s entrepreneurial adventure

2. 2018 to 2021: Steer Automotive’s early days

3. 2021: PE transaction #1 - Chiltern / Keyhaven

4. Steer Automotive’s M&A playbook

5. 2024: PE transaction #2 - Oakley

6. Learnings for emerging aggregators and Indy Sponsors

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This week’s supporter shout-out goes to the Redeye Serial Acquirers Conference. Held for the 6th year running in Stockholm - the HoldCo mecca to rival Omaha, Nebraska - the Conference gathers several hundred established and emerging acquirers and investors from all over the world. Our writeup from last year’s conference: Part 1 & Part 2. 

Thank you Redeye for inviting us once again!

Stockholm, 12-13 March 2026. See you there! 

2025 video highlights here. Conference info and tickets here.   

1. Richard Steer’s entrepreneurial adventure

The backstory of Steer Automotive is proof that the best rollups happen when industry passion meets daft financial engineering. Also: don’t be afraid to start small. 

Richard Steer is 61. His career began in the 1980s in the Paints division of the then chemical giant ICI (now part of AkzoNobel). After a while, Richard was approached by a customer called Grove Motor Colours. By his own admission, Richard “had a really good time there for about six years but couldn't get enough skin in the game”. 

In 1999, he acquired J&C Auto Supplies Limited: a small automotive paint distributor located in a nondescript industrial park deep in London’s suburban sprawl. Public filings suggest that, in the ensuing 14 years, Richard grew J&C (since rebranded to JCA) from £6M in revenue to £30M. And then in 2013, he sold the business to the US car parts distributor LKQ.  

That transaction was driven in equal parts by opportunity and fear. 

With LKQ pouncing on AkzoNobel’s North American automotive paint distribution business and Euro Car Parts, Britain’s largest distributor of automotive aftermarket parts in the same year (2011), “Steer realised that one of the paint companies or consumable manufacturers would inevitably capitulate and start supplying product to LKQ and then his business would be threatened” (source). 

Since Richard didn’t savour the prospect of negotiating 1-on-1 with a $4B revenue gorilla, he pulled together a “virtual rollup”. Based on the same interview, “A deal was struck for 6 paint distribution companies on 6 August 2013 and the following day Steer was running all 6 distributors and set about creating LKQ Coatings”. 

According to public filings, JCA traded for £15.3M in enterprise value, consisting of £8.3M in cash, debt assumption of £6.3M, loan notes of £650K and a holdback of £150K. 

Not the biggest deal, but gave Richard a meaningful war chest.  

Richard spent the next 5 years running LKQ’s UK business, which, according to his Linkedin bio, had become the dominant paint supplier acquisition to the collision repair sector, “three times larger than any other player in the UK market”. 

By 2018, it was time for the next adventure. 

2. 2018 to 2021: Steer Automotive’s early days

In his own words, in 2018 Richard “bumped into a multi-site bodyshop customer who had mothballed a shop after his dad died and was considering selling out”. That firm was Baldwins Repair Group, and Richard acquired it weeks later for £3.4M: financed two-thirds with a bank loan and one-third with a shareholder loan. 

In other words, Day 1 equity value was £1M, or $1.3M based on the exchange rate at the time. Back then, Baldwins’ filings suggest that it was doing £10M in revenue and £900K in EBITDA. 

Remember these figures! 

By the time COVID hit, Steer Automotive had doubled revenues (to £22M in the year ending March 2022) with the addition of Quicks ASR Limited and Prestige Car Refinishing Limited. The network expanded from 4 sites to 9. 

Steer Automotive’s equity efficiency is phenomenal. The accounts of RKS Holding - the TopCo at the time - show that in the 3 years to 2021, the business had produced cumulative operating cash flow of £5.9M, versus £5.3M in investing cash flow. This includes the original Baldwins acquisition as well as the two add-ons. 

Richard’s interviews (here and here) shed light on his operating philosophy:

• Removing frictional costs and duplication of processes

• Building a pipeline of talent through an in-house training academy and an apprenticeship programme  

• Broadening parts sourcing to alternative suppliers

• Running a decentralised organisation. As Richard put it, “We don’t have a head office with a central team saying, ‘do this’ or ‘do that’. We have local teams managing local people”

• Managing capacity of each site by allocating a certain number of spaces to each client (e.g. insurer) - as opposed to indiscriminately accepting jobs

Soon enough, Richard began to receive calls from lower mid market Private Equity firms looking for the next starter rollup. The COVID aftermath had brought twin shocks to the British collision repair industry, creating a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the savvy consolidator.

One, the insurance claims tsunami. 

Even though the number of personal injuries due to collisions involving cars has been steadily dropping (source), motor insurance claims have been rising at a fast clip. According to the industry body ABI, in 2024 UK motor insurers paid out £11.7B in claims. That’s up 17% YoY & up 72% vs. 2019 (source). 

Despite the simultaneous surge in premiums, according to analysis by EY, as a group, UK motor insurers managed to lose money in 2021, 2022 and 2023, - before turning a small profit in 2024. 

There are many reasons behind the claims spike. An ABI report lists uninsured driving, young drivers, whiplash injuries… and so on. For the purposes of our research, let’s single out one: repair costs. Compared to pre-COVID era, the average repair cost is up by one-quarter: from £4,200 to £5,200 (source).  

Which brings us to the second shock: a collision repair industry that was no longer coping: 

• As Richard pointed out, many business owners are in their 60s - with no succession planning and limited exit opportunities

• Repairs training not keeping up with the growth in electric and Heavy Goods Vehicles (source). 

It was time to go big. 

3. 2021: PE transaction #1 - Chiltern / Keyhaven

In March 2021, Richard succumbed to the Private Equity’s siren call. The Chiltern/Keyhaven consortium acquired Steer Automotive for £17.4M (this is based on public filings), which broke down as follows:

• Cash £5.3M

• Deferred consideration £2M

• Loan notes £9M (i.e. Richard’s rollover into the new structure)

• Transaction costs £1M

Adding in the debt, we arrive at an enterprise value just below £20M: a 6x increase on the 2018 buy-in - but puny by the Private Equity standards.   

On Day 1, Chiltern and Keyhaven contributed c.£9M in equity - the initial £6M plus the funding for the add-on completed just days after the platform acquisition (Premier Panel Skills). 

As Steer Automotive ramped up M&A activity (see below), the Sponsors doubled their investment to £19M. Keyhaven contributed 96% and Chiltern 4%. Including Richard’s rollover, total equity investment was £28M. 

By the time Steer Automotive was sold again, in April 2024, its balance sheet showed £238M of debt:

• £33M in shareholder loans (the £28M above plus the PIK interest charged at 12% p.a.)

• £205M in third party debt: a non-amortising debt facility from Ares carrying a 6.25% margin

Where did this money go? 

4. Steer Automotive’s M&A playbook

Let's take a moment to dissect the strategy that enabled Steer to grow from 4 sites to more than 200. We have comped all 25 publicly disclosed corporate acquisitions. For each transaction, we have looked at: revenue; profits; consideration paid (and composition thereof); plus high-level balance sheet data. 

The analysis makes for a fascinating reading! 

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