NEP On the acquisitions trail

Broadcast



Facilities firm NEP has a long history of buying up businesses to deliver growth. Adrian Pennington reports on its plans for further expansion and investment to keep pace with advances in technology.

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Throughout its 30-year history, NEP has grown by acquisition, so while a recent spate of investments may have drawn attention to the US-headquartered facilities firm, it is business as usual for president and chief executive Kevin Rabbitt.
“In 2013, NEP was largely present in the US and UK, and largely a mobile unit and video display business. But in the past 18 months, we’ve accelerated to look at some other services and geographies,” explains Rabbitt, who has led the company since 2012.
In January 2014, NEP established a significant footprint in the south-east Asia market by purchasing Global Television, which facilitates the majority of premium live sport produced in Australia and boasts co-host broadcaster credentials for the 2014 Commonwealth Games.
Switching attention to Europe, last December the group landed Dutch LED screen rental firm Faber Audiovisuals, and since the start of this year has added Ire- land’s Screen Scene, Sweden’s Mediatec Group, Germany’s RecordLab and Belgium’s Outside Broadcast.
Combined, the company employs 1,500 staff and fields a fleet of 110 HD trucks, plus
ancillary gear such as flypacks. New assets have also strengthened its display business and broadened its resources to include satellite uplinks (with four trucks from Digital Space, part of Screen Scene); studios (notably in Australia); and post-production, VFX and finishing through facilities in Dublin (Screen Scene) and Belgium (Media- sense, part of Outside Broadcast).
“We certainly don’t define ourselves as a mobile unit provider or outside broadcast supplier,” says Rabbitt. “We are a worldwide outsource solutions provider supporting the live event and broadcast industry.”
NEP’s scale offers security for clients and provides insurance for its own business, he explains. “If we were just a mobile busi-ness or operating in a single territory, that would concern us, but our strategy makes us a safer bet. Our coverage of multiple geographies and services allows us to have a more balanced portfolio. Our scale allows us to work with suppliers and manufacturers to attain the best kit at the best price, and to move assets and personnel around for a consistency of service.”
Alive to the idiosyncrasies of individual markets, NEP operates a decentralised structure in which the companies it acquires are, by and large, managed autonomously and retain their original brands.
“When we’re assessing partners we want to acquire, we are very mindful of the sustainability of that business,” says NEP UK managing director Steve Jenkins. “They aren’t reliant on the NEP acquisition to turn them into successful businesses; they already have a solid backbone. We are adding complementary access to broader resources and a wider talent base, and putting a well-renowned facilities operator behind them.”
Fallow year
He suggests the group’s expansion means it is better able to weather the traditional fallow years of the outside broadcast cycle, of which 2015 is one.
“Many US-based brands are exploring how they might launch into Europe,” Jenkins says. “Knowing they have a solid service provider with an understanding of the way they work will prove extremely useful.”
Although the company claims to have no plans to add any more UK companies to its roster, the spending spree is far from over. “There are a lot of areas in Europe, Asia and South America that present opportunities for us,” says Rabbitt.
The group’s long-established UK business, NEP Visions, vies with Arena, CTV and Telegenic for the major contracts. It holds contracts with Sky Sports for the English Premier League, IMG for horse racing and the BBC for athletics and Wimbledon.
“I am sure NEP must be thinking about another UK acquisition,” says Arena managing director Richard Yeowart, adding that his company is not for sale. “If it could gain an extra 20% of the UK market, it would have a lot of power to dictate rates to both suppliers and, to some extent, customers.”
In Europe, NEP’s chief rival is Paris-based Euro Media Group (EMG), which through consolidation has assembled the continent’s largest fleet of trucks.
Formed in 2007 through the merger of The Netherlands’ UBF Media Group and France’s Euro Media Television, which claimed a UK presence in 2005 with its acquisition of CTV Outside Broadcasts, EMG boasts 74 units, including those for RF, editing and SNG.

Missing links

Acquisitions by EMG in 2010 include Italy’s 3Zero2, French SNG provider S-TV, and British camera specialist Aerial Camera Systems. In 2013, EMG paid ¤25m (£18m) for the assets of bankrupt Belgian OB sup- plier Alfacam, giving it access to expertise in RF wireless links. That capacity has been strengthened by its acquisition in May of UK links expert Broadcast RF.
Not coincidentally, both EMG and NEP are owned by private equity firms (PAI Partners and Crestview Partners respectively) with the deep pockets needed for acquisitions and the perpetual desire to see return on investment. “One thing is for sure, with 4K and 8K
around the corner, only those with very deep pockets are likely to survive as there is never any let-up in the ongoing investment required by the sector,” warns Yeowart.
NEP chief technology officer George Hoover says most of the company’s work on 4K to date has been on producing replays and analysis from 4K-captured images, but NEP Australia was behind Star India’s direct-to-home 4K feed of the Cricket World Cup in March, and the same division is launching fully 4K trucks in July and December.
More intriguingly are launches, in the same timeframe, of two trucks to cover American Football, which Hoover describes as equipped with IP infrastructure that promises more remote production and the possibility of undermining the real-estate of traditional OB operation.

However, there will remain a demand for large-scale OBs, insists Jenkins. “If you are pushing the boundaries of 4K, then you need a large OB truck on site, and you also need expertise in building out technology to cater for changes brought by IP.”