Capital structure for the companies building what the government buys.
Fabius Group serves as fractional and interim CFO to government contractors and defense, drone and dual-use technology companies, from a founder’s first federal award to a credit facility, a priced round or a CFO transition.
When the finance seat has to change
Most companies outgrow their finance function in one of two ways. A founder-led startup reaches the point where investors, lenders and a government customer all want answers its engineers cannot give. Or an established company finds that the seat that served it well for years now needs capital structure: debt, federal credit and a model that survives a lender’s diligence.
Hardware companies feel this first. Their assets are real, their contracts are long and their cash flows rarely match the capital they raised. We step in as a part-time chief financial officer, backed by a bench of independent specialists in investment banking, government contracts accounting and technical engineering, and match each asset to the capital shaped like its cash flows. Our paper Financing the New Industrial Base sets out the argument.
What we do
Federal credit
Preparing for and carrying the credit conversation with federal lenders, including the Department of Defense Office of Strategic Capital: the application, the model behind it and the diligence that follows.
Equipment and asset-backed finance
Facilities structured against hardware that holds its value and can be redeployed, with the collateral and residual-value case a lender can underwrite.
Finding the lender
For asset classes without an obvious comparable: building the comp set, framing the collateral and putting the deal in front of credit teams able to say yes.
The note book and cap table
Convertible and promissory notes inventoried, documented and reconciled to the cap table, then settled or converted alongside company counsel.
A model that survives diligence
An operating and financing model investors, lenders and government reviewers can test, built to the instrument being raised, with fundraising materials and a data room to match.
Government contract finance
SBIR, STTR and OTA award accounting, indirect rate structure, and selecting the government-contracts accounting team that closes your books to the standard federal auditors expect.
How we engage
Fractional
A standing number of days each month in the CFO seat: board reporting, the monthly close, cash and runway, and the capital plan.
Interim
When a long-tenured CFO retires or leaves: we hold the seat, redefine what it needs to become, and hand it to the right full-time hire.
Project
A single capital event, such as a federal loan application, an equipment facility, a note conversion or a priced round, scoped and priced on its own.
Separate from our acquisitions business
Fabius Group also acquires established SDVOSB and 8(a) federal contractors. The two businesses are run separately. We do not acquire venture-stage defense-technology companies, including drone startups, and advising a company is never a path to buying it. Our advisory clients get an advisor whose only interest is the company’s success.
Start the conversation.
If your company is facing a capital question, such as a credit facility, a federal loan, a note book or a raise, or its CFO seat needs to change, the first conversation costs nothing.
Contact Fabius Group