The situation: Before insolvency, but no longer self-sustaining
The company operated two logistics centres in the Vienna region with a focus on contract logistics for consumer goods and electronics. Three owner family branches, 145 employees, €38M revenue, EBITDA margin fluctuated between −5% and 0% over the last three years.
Special-situation triggers: sharply higher Austrian wage costs after the 2022/23 wage settlements, energy-cost explosion in the warehouses (heating, lighting, cooling), and the loss of a major customer (~€6M annual revenue contribution) in Q4 2023. Equity had eroded from €4.2M to €0.8M within 24 months.
The house bank signalled in early 2024 that the credit line would not be extended without substantial equity reinforcement. The owner families were neither willing nor able to inject further equity.
There was no insolvency-petition obligation yet (not yet insolvent, not yet over-indebted in the legal sense), but the next 6 months would very likely have triggered it. This is the classic Tactical timing.
What we did: Acquisition plus equity injection, then repositioning
Phase 1 (weeks 1–14): Acquisition. Structured share deal with all three owner families. Acquisition price fair but not high — the owners were relieved by an orderly solution that preserved the company. At the same time €3.5M equity injection from Tactical at closing, stabilising the balance sheet and securing the house-bank credit line.
Phase 2 (months 1–6): Stabilisation. Immediate renegotiation of customer contracts with price adjustments (wage and energy escalator clauses missing in the old contracts). Energy-cost hedging via 12-month forward contracts. 20% warehouse-space reduction by densification in Logistics Centre 1.
Phase 3 (months 7–18): Repositioning. Build-up of a specialised e-commerce fulfillment business in Logistics Centre 2 (higher margin than classic B2B contract logistics). Three new customers won, including two from the German e-commerce market with Austria-warehouse requirements. Implementation of daily treasury reporting and a cost-per-order KPI framework.
After 18 months: EBITDA margin +5.5%, equity back to €4.8M, credit line reduced by 30% (because cash generation had risen), all 145 jobs preserved.
Signature element: Customer-contract renegotiation in crisis
The decisive lever was not the equity injection (which stabilised the balance sheet) but the renegotiation of customer contracts in the first 6 months after acquisition.
The owner families' legacy contracts had been concluded in a different cost world (2018–2020) and contained no adequate escalator clauses for wage and energy costs. The owners had not dared to speak to customers about price adjustments for fear of losing customers.
We negotiated directly with all top-15 customers — with a clear argument: 'We cannot continue these contracts at these terms. We offer you three options: price adjustment, volume adjustment, or orderly contract termination with transition period.' For 13 of 15 customers this led to fair price adjustments (+8% on average). Two customers switched — but the margin on the remaining contracts was better than on the original 15.