After 40 years down the drains, Dyno-Rod aims for £65m float

Dyno-Rod, the Surbiton-based company which has been unblocking drains for four decades, is set for a flotation on the stock market this summer.

Dyno-Rod, the Surbiton-based company which has been unblocking drains for four decades, is set for a flotation on the stock market this summer.

The company's 74-year-old founder, Jim Zockoll, is selling the business, which has expanded in recent years from maintaining drains into plumbing and locksmithing. Brokers have valued the group at about £65m.

A new management team has been assembled to run a new floated entity, to be called Dyno Group, which will be buying the company from Mr Zockoll.

The chief executive will be Kevin Mahoney, the former UK head of the Danish group ISS when it bought the Blue Ribbon cleaning company in 1999. He is a member of the board of the Centre for Economics and Business Research.

Dyno-Rod and the other businesses operate a franchise model, with more than 140 franchisees offering emergency call-outs across the UK. Dyno-Rod itself has grown strongly in recent years thanks to the introduction of CCTV drain inspections. In the two years to 2001, it increased sales by a half to £50m.

The company was established in 1963 by Mr Zockoll, an American who was working at the time as a pilot for Pan Am. He saw electromechanical machines being used to clean drains in the US and invested £20,000 of his own money to import some of the equipment into the UK, setting up the first operations in south London. The group now spans services including emergency lock opening, video-entry systems, and pest control through its Dyno-Kil franchise.

Mr Zockoll, nicknamed the Drain Brain, originally put Dyno-Rod up for sale last year, and Collins Stewart, the broker, was among the names in the frame to buy the company, with a view to an accelerated IPO.

The flotation is being organised by way of a sale of Dyno to a new entity, which will pay Mr Zuckoll's company about £65m. That purchase will be funded with a mixture of debt and equity. Seymour Pierce has been appointed broker and will begin the equity fund raising in the coming days. It is understood that the final ratio of equity to debt will depend on demand from institutional investors, with £25m to £30m being targeted. A flotation is pencilled in for late next month or early August.

Mr Zockoll also owns Phonenames, a new business which creates phone numbers based on words made up from the letters on phone keypads - another concept imported from the US.