Middle-market private equity shop Excellere Partners LLC is testing the market with its agricultural chemicals platform SePro Corp. a little over three years after investing in the business, The Deal has learned.

Excellere Partners has retained Raymond James Financial Inc. and Piper Sandler Cos. to run an auction for the maker of herbicides, algaecides and fungicides for landscaping, golf course maintenance, general agriculture use and aquatic applications, people familiar with the matter said.

Carmel, Ind.-based SePro generates close to $40 million in Ebitda, the people explained. Based on historical agricultural chemical multiples, a deal for SePro could land between $400 million and $500 million.

Financial data books have been disseminated to prospective financial and strategic buyers, the sources said.

The historical multiple range for agricultural chemicals business is around 10 times to 13 times Ebitda, one of the sources said. The $2.6 billion purchase of the environmental science professional business of Bayer AG by Cinven Partners LLP in March offers a good recent comparable, the source suggested. The sale price represented a multiple of 12.5 times reported Ebitda of about €200 million ($208 million).

Denver-based Excellere purchased SePro for an undisclosed sum in February 2019. The firm has since announced one bolt-on transaction for the platform — the October 2020 purchase of Applied Biochemists, Marine Biochemists and other select business assets from Innovative Water Care LLC, which does business as Sigura, for an undisclosed amount.

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