Castle Harlan has closed its sale of Tensar Corporation to publicly traded Commercial Metals Company (CMC) for $550 million.
Tensar’s products and services are used in infrastructure and construction projects to provide soil stabilization (using polymer-based geogrids), earth retention, foundation support and erosion and sediment control. The company’s main go-to-market brands include Tensar geogrids and Geopier foundation systems.
Tensar’s customers include commercial, industrial and residential site developers; transportation, coastal and waterway authorities; mining and waste management companies. Tensar is led by CEO Mike Lawrence and is headquartered in Alpharetta, Georgia.
Castle Harlan’s fifth fund, Castle Harlan Partners V LP (CHP V), acquired Tensar in July 2014 from Arcapita.
“We enjoyed working with Castle Harlan over the seven years we were with them,” said Mr. Lawrence. “Their advice and guidance proved to be useful to the growth of the company, and they supported us in establishing our industry-leading team of people. We look forward to a strong future in our markets with significant prospects and still many unmet opportunities.”
The $550 million purchase price for Tensar is equal to 9.2x the company’s 2021 EBITDA of $60 million. Including $5 million of cost synergies estimated by CMC, the EBITDA multiple drops to 8.5x. Over the past five years, Tensar’s average EBITDA margin is just over 25%. For a PDF copy of CMC’s investor presentation on the purchase of Tensar click HERE.
“Tensar, a portfolio company of CHP V, has been a successful investment. It has been very gratifying to be able to work with a first-rate management team and to allow the company to grow into becoming the global leader in its field with new products that have a positive impact on addressing the world’s infrastructure needs,” said Marcel Fournier, a senior managing director at Castle Harlan. “We are extremely pleased to see the company find its new place alongside CMC’s other complementary operations.”
Commercial Metals Company (NYSE: CMC) manufactures, recycles, and markets steel and metal products and other related materials through a network of seven electric arc furnace (EAF) mini mills, two EAF micro mills, a rerolling mill, steel fabrication and processing plants, construction-related product warehouses, and metal recycling facilities in the United States and Poland. CMC was founded in 1915 by Jacob Feldman and today has annual revenues of more than $5.5 billion with a headquarters in Irving, Texas.
“I am thrilled to welcome Tensar’s 650 worldwide employees to Commercial Metals,” said Barbara Smith, Tensar’s chairman, president, and chief executive officer. “This acquisition marks another important milestone in CMC’s growth strategy, expanding the scope of products and services we can provide to our customers.”
Castle Harlan makes control investments in middle-market companies in North America, Europe, and Australia. The firm has raised eight private equity funds – five in the United States and three in Australia – totaling more than $6 billion in capital commitments. Castle Harlan was founded in 1987 and is based in New York City
Morgan Stanley was the financial advisor to Castle Harlan and Tensar, and Rockefeller Financial was the financial advisor to CMC.
© 2022 Private Equity Professional | April 26, 2022
Lincolnshire Management has sold Schumacher Electric, a designer, manufacturer, and supplier of power supply products, to Ripple Industries.
“The management team at Schumacher was a pleasure to work with and never rested, driving the business relentlessly towards higher sales and earnings,” said TJ Maloney, the CEO of Lincolnshire. “Schumacher placed a high priority on e-commerce initiatives as well as introducing a new consumer products line in Europe.”
“When we invested in Schumacher in October 2020, we teamed with management to reposition the company for strong growth by executing a multipronged strategy,” said Tom Callahan, a managing director at Lincolnshire. “This was a great team effort that drove results with product extensions into aftermarket EV chargers while also creating new channel partners and OEM relationships to increase distribution.”
Los Angeles-based 
Race Winning Brands, a portfolio company of MiddleGround Capital, has added on with the buy of TPT Solutions.
“We believe the addition of these three legendary brands to our family is a natural next step, adding outside-of-the-engine performance,” said Mr. Bruegging. “With a strong presence in both diesel and gasoline transmission products, along with a strong management team led by Frank Kuperman, we see tremendous synergies with this acquisition for many reasons – but especially for our customers.”
“TPT is a perfect addition to RWB’s platform, bringing complementary product categories to RWB’s already-diverse portfolio,” said John Stewart, the founding partner of MiddleGround. “The TPT team has driven impressive above-market growth through its own product portfolio expansion, and RWB’s deep culture of product innovation and strong track record of adding and integrating new brands through acquisition set the combined platform up for success, providing customers with a one-stop-shop experience.”
Trive Capital has held final closings of Trive Capital Fund IV LP (Fund IV) and Structured Capital Fund I (SCF I) with an aggregate $1.95 billion of capital commitments. According to Trive, both of its new funds saw strong investor demand and closed at their respective hard caps of $1.6 billion and $350 million.
“We are grateful for our continued partnership with a supportive and diverse group of global institutional investors, and we are thrilled to welcome many new investors, who share our confidence in the value creation capabilities of Trive,” said Mr. Searcy. “In Fund IV and SCF I, our team will continue to invest in strategically viable middle-market businesses with the ability to tailor bespoke, creative solutions across the capital structure.”
“We believe Fund IV and SCF I drew strong interest from investors as a result of our deep value investing approach, quality of the Trive team, and our demonstrated success in deploying an operationally-focused investment strategy,” said Mr. Zugaro. “Our team’s consistent approach has yielded strong performance and meaningful value creation across the Trive portfolio. This continued to resonate with our investors in the recent fundraises. We look forward to continuing to execute this strategy as we further deploy Fund IV and SCF I.”
