Good morning everyone, and welcome to the CBIZ update conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Lori Novickis, Director of Corporate Relations. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us this morning for a review of our M&A strategy and update on Monday's announcement of our most recent acquisition, Marks Paneth. For those of you dialing in, we are also using a slide presentation concurrent with this webcast that is also posted to the Investor Relations page of our website. As a reminder, a link to this live webcast as well as an archived replay and transcript can also be found on our website. Following management's initial remarks this morning, we will also pause for a brief Q&A session. Before we begin, we would like to remind you that the effective date of the Marks Paneth acquisition is January 1st, 2022, and therefore, this transaction will have no impact on our full year 2021 results that will be announced later next month during our earnings call.
During our presentation, management may discuss certain forward-looking statements regarding our business, financial condition, results of operations, cash flows, strategies, prospects, and anticipated benefits and perceived advantages of acquisitions, including non-GAAP financial measures like pro forma impact from the Marks Paneth transaction on 2022 and beyond. Forward-looking statements represent only estimates on the date of this conference call and are not intended to give any assurance as to actual future results. Because forward-looking statements relate to matters that have not yet occurred, these statements are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties. Many factors could cause future results to differ materially, and CBIZ assumes no obligation to update forward-looking statements. A more detailed description of such factors can be found in the filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Joining us today, for today's call are Jerry Grisko, President and Chief Executive Officer, Ware Grove, Chief Financial Officer, and Chris Spurio, President of our Financial Services Division. I will now turn the call over to Jerry for his opening remarks. Jerry?
Thank you, Lori, and thank you everybody for joining us. Before I start with my remarks, I do also want to build on Lori's disclaimer that what we will not be doing today is giving guidance or updating the guidance that we previously provided. Just remind everybody that we will be releasing our earnings for the full year of 2021 sometime in February. A notice will be sent out, but whatever we do on guidance, we will do in connection with that release. Again, nothing today should be construed as impacting the guidance that was already into the market. With that said, we're excited to have you join us today and really appreciate you taking the time.
We entered into 2021, as we've said, with the fullest M&A pipeline that we've seen in our recent history. Throughout last year, we had added six transactions that will bring approximately $75 million in combined revenue on a full run rate basis. In addition, as Lori indicated this past Monday, we announced the acquisition of Marks Paneth, a New York-based tax accounting and advisory firm with approximately $138 million of annualized revenue to CBIZ, again on a full run rate basis. In light of all of this activity, we wanted to spend our time this morning reviewing our M&A strategy, highlighting the six transactions that we completed last year, and then discussing Marks Paneth and the opportunities that it presents for all of our stakeholders, including our shareholders, our clients, and our team members.
As you all know, at CBIZ, we have a long and successful track record of sustained growth, both organic and inorganic. Today, we'd like to talk about the inorganic component of that growth strategy, that being growth through acquisitions. Let's begin by talking about our strategy, the attributes of the firms that they look for, and then the structure of a typical transaction. From a strategic standpoint, while we have over 100 offices located in 20 major markets across the country, if you look at that map on page four of our investor deck, there's still a significant number of very attractive demographic markets that we look to expand into. We've identified those markets. We have a long list of targets in those markets.
What you experience, what we experienced over last year and again with the Marks Paneth transaction is execution of that strategic vision to expand into attracting attractive geographic markets or to strengthen our presence in an existing market. Two examples of expanding into attractive geographic markets you saw last year with the addition of the Berntson Porter firm in Bellevue, Washington, that being the Greater Seattle, Washington area, and the addition of Shea Labagh Dobberstein in San Francisco. Both of those firms are very, very well-positioned in those markets with outstanding reputation, strong leadership, strong management, and strong alignment in vision for the future of the practice, and we're very excited to bring those firms on. Of course, Marks Paneth, we have a very strong practice in New York.
This bolsters our presence, and we'll talk a lot more about that later on in this call. Another strategic objective for us is to add breadth of service or depth of expertise to our existing offerings. An example of that would have been the ARC transaction again in the San Francisco Bay Area that added technical accounting expertise, prep for IPO services, et cetera. Breadth of service and depth of expertise to our advisory practice. Another strategic objective is to expand into high-growth industries and service lines. An example of that would have been our acquisition some four and a half years ago of an expansion into the private equity industry space with our acquisition of CMF.
At the time of that acquisition, our total revenue in that space prep for sale and TAS transaction support service, was probably several million dollars. Today, that practice through the acquisition of CMF, Laurus and some others that we've announced is nearing $50 million. Again, expansion into a very high growth service industry. Of course, with all of that comes access to top talent as well. Finally, while it may not always be the case, certainly all of the transactions that we've talked about, including the Marks Paneth transaction, all of those we completed last year, and I think really all of those that we've done in our history have been immediately accretive to shareholders. Another key component of our strategy.
The attributes that we look for in the firms and the companies that join us is first and foremost cultural fit. That is as much art as science, but we spend a lot of time with those firms, from the very beginning conversations all the way through due diligence, making sure that their culture is aligned with our culture, and again, critically important to us. Second is that we look for the most highly regarded firms in the space that we're pursuing. Again, within our core services, accounting and tax, insurance services, payroll services, those core services, the most highly regarded firms.
We also are interested in. Oftentimes the question comes up around our retention of the team, and I will share that we have a very strong record of retaining those team members long after those firms join our organization. We oftentimes acquire with those firms very strong leadership. That is the case really with all of the firms that we've talked about that we acquired in 2021 and prior to that, and certainly the case with our Marks Paneth transaction. Finally, we have an expression here called One CBIZ. We are One CBIZ.
What that means is that we share a vision for the future, what the opportunities are, where our investments gonna make, our commitment to growth, our commitment to opportunities, to cross-serve additional services into our clients, to provide additional opportunities for our associates and team members for their career growth. Through our due diligence process and through our discussions with these firms, what's critically important to us is that we share a vision for those things and that everybody locks arms and that we're committed to those things. Those are the attributes that we are always looking for in these firms, and those are attributes that we certainly found in the firms that we've just talked about.
From a structural standpoint, it varies based on the type of business, the type of industry, et cetera. Certainly within the core accounting businesses, which is really what we're largely talking about today, in all of the transactions, it's really we usually pay a multiple of trailing EBITDA. We solve to an IRR return that is a reasonable premium over our WACC, and we can talk about that a little bit, but usually in the kind of 15th percentile target range from an IRR perspective. Half, again, on the Financial Services side, half of that consideration is typically paid up front. The balance is paid over an earn-out period, oftentimes three years based on achieving some reasonable growth objectives.
We oftentimes structure our transactions where while the lion's share of the proceeds are in the form of cash, we also like to add a stock component so that we create alignment between the firm that's joining us and our shareholders and the performance of our stock. Obviously, we want the recipients of those shares to join in the success that we've had in our stock price, certainly over a long period of time. That's a key component as well. With that, by way of background, over our 25-year history, we've successfully acquired and integrated over 200 companies. On average, we typically close between four and six transactions a year.
Although of late, those transactions tend to be are trending higher in both the volume of the transactions that we're seeing and the volumes of the transactions that we're working through, and then the size of those transactions in many instances. If you look at that 25-year history, we've had really quite extraordinary success in creating shareholder value, both from an ROI standpoint, a return on investment standpoint, our success in integrating those firms and the long-term growth in value that we've created for our shareholders over time by being able to grow those firms from the time that they joined us, and that point forward. We source those transactions really through three channels. Oftentimes, there are intermediaries, there are specialized specialists in the industries.
You've seen, for example, in many of the accounting firms, the name Allan Koltin. Allan Koltin is oftentimes involved as a consultant with these firms, and he is a strong supporter of CBIZ and someone who has been very supportive of us in integrating or identifying candidates and getting to the table to have the conversation with firms in that space. Similarly, there are intermediaries in the insurance brokerage space, and on the advisory side of the business and in most of those other transactions. We are oftentimes thought of and considered whenever those intermediaries have opportunities for transactions that meet our criteria.
In addition, we didn't wanna leave it to chance, so over the past several years, we've made substantial investments in our own internal teams that are charged with just cultivating that pipeline and always having those conversations. Then, of course, our local market and practice line and service line leaders all have acquisitions as a key focus of theirs as well. Through those channels, as I said, you know, we've created a very full pipeline. That pipeline continues to be very attractive and very full for us, and we're very pleased with the number and the volume and the size and the quality of the transactions that we're seeing. CBIZ, particularly in the past couple of years, I would say, has a very compelling story to tell.
You don't have to look back any further than really the pandemic when certainly out of the blocks, there was a great deal of disruption and uncertainty, and therefore reactions among many of the competitors in our space that candidly, because of our size, because of our scale, because of the strength of our model, the geographic diversity, the diversity of the industries, and just really the profile of our firm, we came through that stronger than many of our competitors. That message resonated. It resonated within the industries, and it resonated with the firms that we're talking to.
Really the message that came across was, through that period of time, we have the strength and the ability to continue to make investments in the growth of the business, to continue to be able to serve our clients with breadth of services and depth of expertise, and the ability to support our team members in ways that many of our competitors can't just because they don't share that same profile. So that's really a very compelling message when we sit with prospects today and one that people took note of.
Some of the highlights of the 2021 acquisitions, what we've done here on page six of the deck, or page five, I guess, of the deck, is to bring you back to the strategic rationale that we have and where each of these firms fit into that strategic rationale. We try to do this, by the way, every time that we come out with a news release, a press release is to tie it back to the strategy because we lead with strategy first, and then we identify attractive firms that fit that strategy. As I mentioned earlier, as far as expansion into very strong and attractive demographic markets, certainly the Berntson Porter firm and the Shea Labagh Dobberstein firms fit that strategic objective.
Adding breadth of service and depth of expertise, one that we didn't talk about earlier in the call, Optumas was a very strategic and strong add to our government healthcare practice, and added the depth of service or breadth of service to that practice, as did Wright Retirement Services within our retirement plan services space. Strengthen our presence in existing markets. There were a couple of smaller firms that added depth of talent and added to our expertise or our strength in existing markets. The Richey May transaction fit that profile in our Denver, Colorado market, as did Weiss in our Southern California market. Certainly Marks Paneth, going on to page six, fits that profile in New York.
Again, the right firm for us to help strengthen an already existing, very strong position in New York, as well as to bolster our position in Philadelphia, where we have a very strong office, as do they, in Boca Raton, Florida, so South Florida. Then we've long looked for a kind of stake in the ground in Metro D.C. We like that market a lot. We have other services available there to us, Benefits & Insurance side, but we didn't have a Financial Services office, so we're excited about that opportunity as well. It also creates substantial scale with $138 million in revenue.
It helps position us to be even stronger in the Metro New York market as well as the Mid-Atlantic region by placing us in the top 10 firms in those regions and adds substantial strength to our team with over 600 team members. Providing a little more background on Marks Paneth. The firm was founded in 1907, headquartered in New York, but really strong offices throughout certainly the Mid-Atlantic region and again with South Florida as well. I will say, and Chris Spurio in a moment will get into further detail, so I won't go to a lot of detail here, but very complementary to what we do. We have a...
Again, in all of those offices, very strong core practice, which is accounting, tax, advisory, litigation support, et cetera, as they do, serving a very complementary and consistent client base. On top of that, they have an extraordinarily strong real estate practice. We have a very strong real estate practice, CBIZ does, nationwide. We were not relatively as strong in New York. This helps bolster our presence in New York. They also have a very strong family office practice. We have a very strong family office. So together, we're gonna be a very dominant player in that space. Not-for-profit practice in Metro New York, we've had some success in building that practice, but they are very strong there. We're excited by way of the opportunities that come.
Again, perfectly complementary to each other, in many ways. As I mentioned, joining us today is Chris Spurio. Chris is the president of our Financial Services Division. The Marks Paneth acquisition will report up through that division. I thought I'd turn it over to Chris for a few moments to talk about the strategic rationale, the impact on our Metro New York practice, and some integration notes. Chris.
Hey, thanks, Jerry. The Marks Paneth transaction is highly strategic for us in many ways. As Jerry mentioned, it provides us with size and scale in a very strategic market. The New York market is one of the largest economies in the world, and we believe with this acquisition, it puts us somewhere near the top 10 and provides us with market permission to pursue much larger opportunities in that space. It also, as Jerry mentioned, provides us with size and scale in some of our existing offices, practices like the Philadelphia practice, Boca Raton, and adds another dot on the map for us in D.C., which is a very strategic market in and of itself.
It also brings immediate value to our clients, both the Marks Paneth clients and the CBIZ clients, and it does it in a variety of ways. One is the expanded service offerings we're gonna be able to bring. As Jerry mentioned, like many firms today, Marks Paneth had identified the need to provide more advisory type services to their clients. They saw our advisory platform as a way to really be able to accomplish that. We believe with this transaction, we're gonna be able to unlock the resources and capabilities we have in our advisory practice and bring that to bear to their client base. In addition, like many firms, they referred a lot of work out, particularly a lot of tax work, tax consulting work, because they lack that expertise in-house.
We have that expertise. We have those capabilities in-house, services like R&D and cost seg and transfer pricing and whatnot. They're by joining us gonna be able to plug into that consulting machine that we have in place. You know, they have several niches that we thought were always attractive and things we thought about, areas we'd like to get in. You know, they're just gonna be able to leverage all of the services, all of the resources we have, not only in Financial Services, but in our Benefits & Insurance division as well.
Lastly, they'll be able to leverage our, you know, our collective thought leadership, our content, our solutions and capabilities that we've built out and that Marks Paneth built out and bring those to our clients. In addition, some of this is redundant with what Jerry said, but we also are able to bring significant industry expertise to our clients. We have in the Financial Services practice a very large real estate practice in most of our offices, but we lack that in the New York City market. That is a significant practice within Marks Paneth. With that, by adding that capability to the New York market will allow us to gain new clients, targets, acquisitions, and to be able to leverage each other's collective strengths.
As Jerry mentioned also, the not-for-profit practice. It's very important for accounting practices to have a not-for-profit practice because it's off-season, and it allows us to leverage our, you know, our staff during off-season periods. We have very successful not-for-profit practices, primarily in the Northeast, but across our footprint, but we didn't have a sizable practice in New York. Again, by adding the Marks Paneth's practice and particularly their not-for-profit practice, we'll be able to leverage their capabilities and their strengths. Strategic leadership. You know, in any acquisition that we look at, the talent, not just at the partner level, but below that is critical, because more than ever, you know, firms are grappling with succession.
With this transaction and everyone we met, they have a really young, dynamic leadership team that we believe is going to be just an incredible fit for us and for them. We'll be able to bolster our succession with this acquisition. Culturally, we share the same core values as they did around client service, around how we treat our employees and about how we support our communities. That was a natural fit. We also share a similar vision for the future. Last is, you know, just talent. The professional services industry is challenged to find talent today.
Not only do we add their 620 employees, but by becoming far more formidable in New York, we think we become that much more attractive to people who are considering accounting and joining us. In addition, they'll also be able to leverage the resources and the investments we've made in our internal recruiting teams and our learning and development teams. We believe that's more important than ever for candidates as they look for options about where they wanna come to work. For all of those reasons, we feel this is a really strategic transaction for us.
If you go to the next page, and you look at the combined footprint, at least in New York Metro, I mean, it's obvious, we have one office in New York City, and now we have five across New York, across Long Island, which is also a strategic market for us, Westchester and Northern New Jersey. On a combined basis now, we have 700 team members, and again, are far more formidable with a far more stronger network to service clients and to leverage the services we have in that combined space. Very excited about the transaction.
Yeah. Thank you, Chris. With that, I'll turn it over to Ware Grove for a moment just to talk about the transaction highlights and the financial impact.
Yeah. Good morning, everyone. This is Ware Grove. As Jerry outlined earlier in the presentation, I just wanna take a few minutes to talk about the transaction, our liquidity, and some of the incremental impacts we expect for 2022, and then beyond. On page 10, this transaction is very consistent with what we've outlined in the past. We have a portion of the proceeds paid initially with an earn-out over three years. The IRR, as we look at these transactions and evaluate the cash return against the cash outflow, we typically have a target in the 12%-15% range, and this transaction is very consistent with those parameters.
As with most of our transactions, this is primarily a cash-based transaction with an element of shares for CBIZ, which basically adds up to about 10% of the consideration. Of course, with our normal share repurchase activity that you've seen over time, we would expect to neutralize those shares over time as well. This will not be a dilutive addition to the share count. After giving effect to the initial acquisition payments that we just made earlier, the leverage is roughly 1.5x EBITDA. That's important as a takeaway because that leaves us on our $400 million credit facility with about $160 million of capacity.
That's plenty to continue the things that we've continued with respect to actively managing a good pipeline of potential acquisitions in the future and also giving us the flexibility to address share repurchases as we want to. We're not out of the business of acquisitions. I just wanna give you the assurances that the balance sheet continues to be strong, and we continue to look at, as we did last year, a number of potential acquisitions in the pipeline. Now, it's important to consider and bear in mind that as with many large acquisitions, there are closing costs, transaction costs, first-year integration costs, and then some costs that kinda are front-end loaded over the first couple of years.
Turning to page 10. As a reminder, these metrics really just address the Marks Paneth incremental impact. This is not an update to 2022 guidance. It is not a comment on the consolidated expectations. For 2022, we expect revenue to increase roughly $138 million from the effect of Marks Paneth. Again, considering those transaction costs upfront and the first year integration costs, we would expect an EPS addition of roughly $0.10 after you eliminate those upfront costs. The EBITDA, when you eliminate those costs, will be roughly 11%-12% in 2022.
Now, we have other costs built in in the first year, and those costs tend to feather out in the second, third, and basically by 2025, we don't have those upfront transition costs. So when you look at 2023, that initial $0.10 that we expect in 2022 will increase to $0.15-$0.18. It's important to know that once we're out from under these integration costs, we expect the incremental accretion to EPS to be roughly $0.20-$0.25 in that range. On an EBITDA basis, that initial 2022 expectation of 11%-12% will increase to 14%-16% by 2023.
Again, recognizing some residual transition costs. Once those residual transition costs are eliminated, the EBITDA we expect will grow to within a 16%-18% margin of the incremental Marks Paneth revenue. Again, this is not a consolidated guidance. This is just the Marks Paneth expectation. As a reminder, last year, in 2020, I think our full-year EBITDA margin was 13.7%. This is in line, if not better, than the consolidated EBITDA, and that's exactly where we want this to be. With those comments, I'll turn it back over to Jerry for some wrap up.
Okay. Well, thanks. Before I do wrap up, I wanna turn it actually to Chris to talk about integration because we, as I had mentioned at the outset of the call, we've done a lot of transactions in our 25-year history, over 200. Over that period of time, we've really refined our integration approach, our onboarding approach. We've taken those learnings and really mapped out a very, I think a very thoughtful integration approach to Marks Paneth. I’ll turn it over to Chris to talk a little bit about that approach.
Yeah. Thanks, Jerry. You know, while this transaction is fairly large, the process is still the same. We've been through these things before. We're ready, the team is ready to commence on the integration of this. If you think about it's really just immediate things we do. It's the welcome. It's the communication with clients. It's that we're about to enter busy season, so our focus initially is really gonna be on the back office. We're gonna be integrating their payroll teams and their financial reporting teams and the like. We'll also be focused on launching our joint marketing efforts just to make sure that people in the communities know about the transaction and what it means. It's more of the immediate actions.
If you think about the rest of the year, a couple things happen. One is lots of team meetings. You know, we need to get together. We need industry groups we'll get together to learn who each other are and the capabilities and kind of clients they have. Service line teams will get together. We'll plan a lot of that, and we'll be really working on the integration of our systems that we use, our tax system, and the like. That will take a lot of time in 2022, and will position us in 2023 to really start integrating our offices in geographic markets like New York, in Boca, in Philadelphia, and also service lines that we have, like family office and real estate.
That's the process. It's again, it's one that we've done many times before. While the revenue is larger in this transaction, in some respects, it's an easier integration for us because they're fairly established in many respects, and we'll be able to plug and play. Thanks. Jerry.
Thank you, Chris. The other thing I would share, on that note, Chris mentioned that there will be a lot of meetings. One of the things that gave us, quite a bit of comfort and assurance as we started to work our way through this transaction was how closely, the leadership at Marks Paneth aligned with the leadership that we have in our office. We have very strong leadership in our existing CDAS office. We've identified very strong leadership at the Marks Paneth office. Again, very encouragingly, those two leaders get along very, very well together. We're gonna take 2022, mostly with the exception of the back office. We'll get that done much quicker.
We're gonna take 2022 and very thoughtfully bring our leadership together with our corporate team and map out a very thoughtful onboarding and integration plan that'll make us lead to our success well into the future. Thanks, Chris, for that. Before I turn it over to Q&A, I just really wanted to kind of wrap up with a summary of what we talked about today. To repeat again, headed into 2021, entered 2021 with a very strong pipeline. If we had looked forward and been able to think about what we actually were able to bring across the finish line with those 6 transactions, we couldn't be more pleased. High-quality firms that bring real strategic value to the organization.
You put on top of that, the announcement from Monday with Marks Paneth, extraordinarily successful 12 or 13 months on the M&A side. With that said, we still have a very full pipeline. We're excited about the prospects in that pipeline and what the future holds as well. We'll get into a bit more of that, certainly in the February call. This one, again, Marks Paneth, very complementary, strong leadership, checks really all of the strategic boxes for us and really excited to bring them on board. What I will do at this point is turn it over for any questions that you may have, and we'd be happy to try to answer those questions as best we can.
We will now begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question comes from Andrew Nicholas with William Blair. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. I appreciate you taking my questions. First one maybe for Jerry. Would you mind speaking to the competitiveness, excuse me, of this deal and maybe M&A markets broadly right now? There's been a lot of activity in the sector of late it seems, some private equity capital coming in. So any update on, you know, pricing broadly, M&A market competitiveness? Then maybe how that impacts your aggressiveness with your acquisition strategy in the near to medium term, if at all.
Yeah. Thank you, Andrew. That's a great question. So we'll speak specifically to the Financial Services or the accounting and advisory space, which is a little bit different than the Benefits & Insurance space. Specifically, to answer your question, you're right. There is more activity in that space. That activity really is being driven by what every kind of thoughtful firm sees as likely change that is coming in the industry and the need to make investments in the industry. Our clients increasingly are facing complex environments, and in order to be able to fully serve those clients, oftentimes that means bringing in advisory services.
Those advisory firms are in very strong demand now and require usually a significant cash purchase price, as opposed to kind of merging in those firms as accounting firms have traditionally done. There's only a handful of firms that have the balance sheet, the capital to make those investments. CBIZ is among those firms. That is driving a lot of activity, a lot of discussions. On top of that, as you indicated, private equity has now entered the space just this year with a couple of sizable acquisitions. We think that they will become more active in that space.
That's actually helpful to us because it's causing all the larger and more sizable firms to think about their longer term strategy and the likelihood that they can be successful going it on their own. Oftentimes those conclusions are that they really should consider joining forces with someone who shares their vision, shares their culture, has the balance sheet to be able to add those services, breadth of expertise, depth of services. Again, CBIZ is there. I suspect that private equity will tell the same story, although I will share that they're at the early innings of that game, and we've been at this a long time. One of the things that we can talk about that they can't talk about is the fact that we've already made those investments.
We already have a sizable private equity practice. We already have a sizable valuation practice and a RAS practice and other advisory services that are attractive to those firms. We're significantly further along in the journey than those private equity firms, although they may have some capital as well to put towards it. As far as pricing is concerned, we really haven't seen a change in the pricing of the core accounting firms as yet, although it's not unreasonable to expect, as we saw in the Benefits & Insurance space, that as private equity becomes more active in that space, those multiples will come up over time. Which leads to the last question you asked, which is, you know, how we view that activity as far as our views in the future.
I will tell you that, I'm not sure it changed because I think we've always had, a commitment to acquisitions. I do believe, though, it does create, as an industry, a greater sense of urgency because, you know, I think there'll be a larger amount of activities, and we want to certainly make sure that we're positioned to take advantage of those opportunities. Hopefully, Andrew, that answers your questions.
Yeah, no, that's incredibly helpful. I didn't realize till after I had wrapped it up that I'd asked basically five questions in one, so I appreciate you hitting on each one of those. All right. A couple more follow-ups. I guess, in terms of cross-serving potential, can you talk a bit about how you bake that into the underwriting process, and maybe how much of your expected accretion that you've outlined or that we outlined for this specific deal is dependent on cross-serving upside?
Yeah. Thanks, Andrew. What I would say is it's all upside opportunity. We do not put that into our model, although it's a key reason why firms join us, key opportunity that we believe we can bring to them. We also have, Chris alluded to it, we also have substantial back-office processes that we've invested in over time here at CBIZ that are very attractive to those firms. Things relating to pricing, things relating to reporting on the profitability of engagements, profitability of clients, in ways to improve the performance that we would expect for them to see into the future. We have a lot of tools, both back-office and as far as it, services, breadth of services, depth of expertise.
We don't build those things into our financial model, so it's really just upside.
All right, great. If I could squeeze one last quick one in, maybe just bluntly, I mean, would you do another large deal in the near term? I realize you have financial capacity to still do something sizable, but wondering if that's something you'd be willing to do or can handle from an integration perspective. There is a lot of heavy lifting here, or so it seems, with Marks Paneth. Just wondering what's reasonable from an, you know, integration capacity standpoint. Thanks again.
Yeah, Andrew, you hit on it, right? That's the gating factor as to whether we can onboard them properly and integrate them properly. As Chris indicated, while this is larger than other transactions that we've done, we feel very strong and confident in our team, in our integration plan, in our integration approach. I will tell you that just because of the way that the industry works, it's not likely we would be able to complete another sizable transaction like this until mid to the latter part of next year. Anyway, we will know by then how this one is going and our capacity to bring another sizable transaction into the fold.
With that said, like I said, we have a really encouraging pipeline, and we will continue to pursue those discussions throughout this period of time. You wouldn't see another sizable transaction in this space, you know, prior to mid-year for sure.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Marc Riddick with Sidoti & Company. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for hosting the call and going over these details. I wanted to go over, I guess, sort of maybe piggybacking on the end of that. The integration part of the process is certainly understandable. Wondering if we could sort of circle back on the financial capacity. With this getting to about 1.5x leverage, is there sort of a way we should think about a general comfort zone for how we should think about, you know, where you would like to be, as far as a sweet spot going forward, given the amount of opportunities that are still out there before you?
Yeah. Hi, Marc. This is Ware Grove. Hey, we've said many times that while we expect the pro forma leverage here is about 1.5 x our limit, technically under our facility is 3.75 x. For the right opportunities, we're not uncomfortable in the 2x-3x range. Given the stability of the business and the predictability and stability of the cash flow, we're not uncomfortable operating in that range. The $400 million credit facility capacity is simply out there because that's what we've needed in the past. You should note that that could be upsized relative to the underlying EBITDA on a later date if needed. Does that answer your question, Marc?
Yes, absolutely. That's very helpful. Thank you. Switching gears to one of the comments that was made during the prepared remarks, and I wanted to touch a little bit on this, was around it sort of hinted at seasonality differentiation, and I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about first whether Marks Paneth's seasonality is similar to the existing CBIZ platform, as far as, you know, revenue/profitability throughout the course of the year, and then whether or not that's one of the acquisition considerations. I think it was. I think the comment was specific around nonprofits, but I was wondering if you could expand on that a bit. Thank you.
Yeah. There's a couple of different layers to your question here, Marc, so let me take it. It's Jerry. Hey, as far as seasonality is concerned, they have, we expect and we believe the same seasonality as the rest of our practice. The comment about not-for-profit is we like the not-for-profit practice because if you think about our busy season, which is typically, you know, there's more than that today, but there's really two really big busy seasons. That's kind of through April 15th, 2022 and then back into the fall again. In the middle period of time, we have staff that is, you know, on our payroll. That not-for-profit work oftentimes is very profitable work to engage that staff in during that, those non-seasonal peak periods of time for us.
That was really the seasonality comment as it relates to not-for-profit. The other question that I heard that you may be also thinking about that I wanted to answer is, in Ware's comments, we are not guiding, by the way, here quarterly or throughout the year. With that said, the expenses connected to the transition and the onboarding and the transaction costs may create an even more uneven impact for CBIZ in certainly the first year and maybe even some of the following second, third years because of those costs. It wouldn't be the normal run rate of the practice, but it would be the way that those expenses come in just because of the transaction and integration costs.
I would caution again, and we'll do this in February, but we do not guide the quarters, and this would be a particularly challenging environment for us to try to give quarterly guidance.
That's fair. I appreciate it. Thank you.
As a reminder, if you would like to join the question queue, you can press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. It looks like we have no more questioners, so this concludes our question- and -answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Jerry Grisko for any closing remarks.
Okay, thank you. Thank you everybody who took the time to join us on the call today. As you can tell, hopefully by our tone and our presentation, we are very excited by the opportunities that presented themselves in 2021 and those outstanding firms that chose to join CBIZ and to pursue our growth together, our future vision together, as well as obviously the Marks Paneth transaction. We continue to have a very strong pipeline. We continue to have the capacity to execute on that pipeline, and we think we have a compelling position in the market that resonates well with those targets.
We will continue to keep you apprised of that progress as we report out throughout 2022, and we just appreciate your ongoing support of our team, and our strategy and our company. Thank you very much, and we look forward to speaking in February. Thank you.
The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.