Like a taste of déjà vu. In Vitré, the medical bed company MMO has been placed in receivership by the Rennes commercial court since January 31. A procedure opened following the financial difficulties of the company, which employs 54 employees. To get things back on track, MMO and its legal representative began looking for a buyer. Offers are accepted until Friday March 29.
“The employees are tired. We are all impatiently waiting for this search for a buyer to settle down…” testifies an employee of the company, who prefers to remain anonymous. “We need a partner, an additional activity that we have not been able to find until now,” she adds.
Founded in 1950, MMO designs, manufactures and distributes medical beds and furniture for health and medico-social establishments. Defender of made in France, the SME has already gone through the stage of judicial recovery in 2011 – it then employed 220 employees for a turnover of around twenty million euros – and in 2018. Each time, it changed shareholders. At the end of April 2019, it was the Rennes fund Alian Industries, an entity dependent on the family office of Breton businessman Daniel Gautier, which took over the reins. In the process, 42 of the 109 employees were made redundant. The strategy initiated in 2018 is confirmed: the community furniture activity is stopped in order to refocus on the medical market.
Better in 2021
A few years later, the company finally got its head above water, supported in particular by an influx of orders during the health crisis. In 2021, “we have a turnover of just under €10 million and we have completed the company’s third profitable financial year,” explained the new general manager, Tristan Debry, in March 2022 to our colleagues at ‘West France. MMO then produces 6,000 medical beds per year, carries out 20% of its activity internationally and employs 75 employees.
At the end of 2023, the results are less rosy. The company, whose cash flow needs are significant, is very dependent on public contracts which take time to materialize. “Moreover,” explains a good expert on the subject, “public structures are also having financial difficulties and are scaling back,” which automatically weighs on MMO revenues.
According to our information, as of December 31, 2023, turnover fell to €7.2 million, despite a commercial partnership with Acomodo, a company from Ploemeur (56) which also specializes in furniture for seniors. It is especially on the profitability side that things are stuck, because MMO shows a net loss of €2 million at the end of 2023. When contacted, neither management nor Alian Industries responded to our questions.
2024-03-28 22:25:35
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