Harris Williams & Co. was the exclusive financial adviser to of Old Time Pottery on its recent sale to Comvest Partners. The transaction was led by Glenn Gurtcheff, Tim Alexander, Brant Cash, and Rami Fetouh of Harris Williams & Co.’s Consumer Group.
Old Time Pottery is a discount retailer of home décor products including home accents, house & kitchenware, seasonal products, linens, and crafts. The company operates 33 store locations in 11 states throughout the Southeast and Midwest. Old Time Pottery was founded in 1986 by the Peterson family and is headquartered in Murfreesboro, TN (www.OldTimePottery.com).
“Old Time Pottery has consistently offered customers a truly differentiated shopping experience, as demonstrated by the success of its stores regardless of the local competitive set, geographic region, or retail center type,” said Glenn Gurtcheff, managing director in Harris Williams & Co.’s Consumer Group. “There are tremendous opportunities for further expansion of Old Time Pottery’s footprint and we look forward to seeing the company’s continued growth in partnership with Comvest.”
Comvest Partners provides debt and equity to middle-market companies. For debt investments the firm will invest from $2 million to $20 million per transaction in companies with $10 million to $200 million of revenue that have positive or negative EBITDA. For equity investments the firm will invest from $10 million to $50 million per transaction in companies with $15 million to $500 million of revenue that have positive or negative EBITDA. Since 2000, Comvest has invested more than $1.9 billion of capital in over 130 public and private companies. The investment in Old Time Pottery was made through Comvest Investment Partners Fund IV. The firm is based in West Palm Beach (www.comvest.com).
Harris Williams & Co.’s Consumer Group has completed more than 100 transactions in recent years across a variety of verticals, including branded consumer products; consumer services; food, beverage and agribusiness; and restaurant and retail.
“We continue to see strong demand for growing retail concepts like Old Time Pottery,” said Tim Alexander, managing director in the firm’s Consumer Group. “Consumers are attracted to discount merchandise and Old Time Pottery is delivering the types of returns on new units that experienced retail investors like to see. The market and company dynamics came together to create a compelling investment opportunity.”
Harris Williams & Co. (www.harriswilliams.com), a member of The PNC Financial Services Group (NYSE:PNC), is a middle market investment bank focused on the advisory needs of clients worldwide. Harris Williams provides sell-side and acquisition advisory, restructuring advisory, board advisory, private placements and capital markets advisory services.
2014 PEPD • Private Equity’s Leading News Magazine • 11-3-14
