Valuation: COLD MOVE LIMITED

You operate temperature-controlled and ambient storage, blast freezing, tempering, case picking and import/export handling from two Oswestry sites, with seven chambers, capacity for around 13,000 pallets and blast/temper capability of up to 150 pallets per day (website). Customers are frozen food manufacturers supplying UK retail, wholesale and catering (directors' report). Revenue is a mix of ongoing pallet storage rental, which behaves as recurring, and transactional handling, blast freezing and picking fees, which flex with customer volumes; our assumption is around 30% genuinely recurring.

You sit in UK temperature-controlled storage and distribution, a market we estimate at £4bn to £5bn a year and growing at roughly 3% to 5% (estimates, not sourced). Demand is being pushed by frozen food's continued share gain in a cost-conscious grocery market, by manufacturers and importers holding deeper buffer stock since Brexit and the border control regime, and by the shortage of modern, BRC-accredited pallet space in the regions. The market is growing modestly in volume but faster in value, because operators have passed through energy, wage and refrigerant costs, exactly as your own strategic report describes. Structurally it is barbell-shaped: a handful of very large, infrastructure and private-equity backed platforms alongside an estimated 200 to 300 independent regional cold stores. Those platforms have been actively rolling up independents for capacity and network coverage for the past eight years. Over three to five years expect more automation-led new build, which is the main structural risk: large automated capacity coming online can soften pallet rates, and F-gas phase-down plus electricity prices will force refrigerant and plant capex on older sites. For a seller, acquirers are genuinely active and freehold, accredited, regional capacity is scarce, so the window is open now rather than widening.

Inferred from the sector, not sourced from your filings.

• Lineage UK (formerly Yearsley): national frozen 3PL, vastly larger than you.
• Magnavale: PE-backed Midlands/Lincolnshire cold stores, larger and automating.
• Reed Boardall: Yorkshire frozen storage and transport, far larger scale.
• Arrow Cold Storage: West Midlands independent, closest to your size and geography.
• Partner Logistics / NewCold: automated high-bay operators, larger, competing on rate per pallet.

Most recent filed accounts: FY2025, made up to 1 November 2025, filed 2 March 2026. That is roughly ten months old, so we value on the filed year rather than rolling forward, but note the FY2026 year end (31 October 2026) has effectively just closed and will move the picture.

Basis: all figures taken directly from the audited medium-sized filing to 1 November 2025 (turnover £5.4m, cost of sales £47k, operating profit £560k, depreciation £410k). EBITDA is operating profit plus depreciation, no estimate involved. The near-99% gross margin is a presentational artefact: direct labour, energy and refrigeration costs all sit in administrative expenses, and a buyer will recut this, so treat the gross profit line as revenue less bought-in goods only.

Cash of £1.3m against long-term creditors of £3.0m (bank loans plus redeemable preference shares, on which £70k of dividend is charged as a finance cost) means roughly £1.7m of net debt to come off enterprise value at completion, before any deferred tax provision of £430k is argued over. Working capital is light for the sector, as it should be for a storage business holding almost no stock, but debtors rose £340k in the year and a buyer will normalise the debtor day trend. The items that will be argued as debt-like or surplus are the redeemable preference shares, director loan movements (£100k withdrawn, £27k introduced), the £700k investment property, and the £2.4m revaluation reserve sitting inside a £10.4m tangible asset base: this is a freehold-backed business, and the property is the single biggest valuation variable.

Sector norms for sub-£10m-revenue regional cold storage are around 5x to 8x EV/EBITDA, with the upper end reserved for freehold, accredited, well-invested sites. Platform-scale deals price well above that: Lineage Logistics' 2018 acquisition of Yearsley Group was reported at around £240m on roughly £100m of revenue, an estimated low-double-digit multiple (reported by The Grocer, September 2018, https://www.thegrocer.co.uk). That is a scale premium you will not capture at £5.4m of revenue, but it explains why consolidators keep buying.

As set out in the bridge at the top of this report, filed operating profit of £560k plus £410k depreciation gives EBITDA of £970k from the filed accounts. The single adjustment is to deduct approximately £34k of rental income attributable to the £700k investment property, which is non-trading and should be sold or extracted separately, giving adjusted EBITDA of £940k. We have not added back director remuneration because the highest-paid-director disclosure was not legible in the filed text supplied; if the two non-executive family directors are drawing salaries, that is further upside.

At 6.0x to 8.0x, adjusted EBITDA of £940k gives an indicative enterprise value of £5.6m to £7.5m, with the investment property and net debt of roughly £1.7m handled separately in the equity bridge. Important caveat: your net assets are £9.3m and your tangible fixed assets £10.4m. An earnings multiple undervalues a freehold cold store estate, and the realistic negotiation reference is the higher of the earnings-based figure and an independent property valuation plus goodwill. Get the property valued before you talk to anyone.

What this range hangs on:

• That the 17.9% EBITDA margin holds once energy pass-through normalises, given operating profit fell 16% while revenue rose 11.5%. - That the £700k investment property and the redeemable preference shares are cleanly separated from the trading business before a buyer prices them as clutter.
• That plant and refrigeration are genuinely up to date: £300k of capex in FY2025 against £1.1m in FY2024 and a £410k depreciation charge suggests under-investment in the latest year, and F-gas compliance will be diligenced hard.
• That the property is professionally valued: on an asset basis the £10.4m tangible estate and £9.3m net assets sit well above the earnings-based range, and that gap is your negotiation.

These bars are calibrated for UK SME exits and do not apply to midcap or larger businesses, where the thresholds are very different.

Revenue scale is what most limits the multiple today: at £5.4m you are below the size at which consolidators pay a platform premium, so you are priced as a bolt-on.

Highest return is the property valuation: it determines whether you are negotiating a £5.6m to £7.5m earnings deal or an asset-backed deal materially above it.

A trade sale would draw the national frozen 3PL groups and the PE-backed regional consolidators, who would pay for the freehold capacity and the accreditation rather than your P&L alone. Realistically that means the highest headline number, a twelve-month exit for you, the Cold Move name likely absorbed, and a real risk that the property is priced separately and the trading multiple squeezed in diligence: run it as a competitive process against at least one individual operator so you can compare cash at completion, not just headline.

At your size a sale is usually a targeted process rather than a full auction: a regional or sector corporate finance adviser approaches a shortlist of credible buyers rather than the whole market. Expect around six to nine months from starting properly to money in the bank.

A specialist adviser is worth their fee here mainly through competitive tension and through protecting the price during diligence, not through finding a buyer you could not have found yourself.