AE Industrial Partners (AEI) has agreed to sell its portfolio company BHI Energy to Westinghouse Electric Company, a portfolio company of Brookfield Business Partners.
BHI Energy is a specialty utility services company that provides onsite services to support the daily operations, routine maintenance and capital investment requirements of nuclear, fossil and renewable power facilities, as well as government decommissioning projects.
The company’s staffing services include both professional and technical staffing, and recruitment process outsourcing. BHI’s workforce includes more than 8,500 project management and technical, professional and craft employees operating at more than 150 global project locations.
The company, led by CEO Bob Decensi and founded in 1979, is headquartered south of Boston in Weymouth, Massachusetts.
“We are grateful for the outstanding partnership we have enjoyed with AEI and its support in growing our service offerings and geographic footprint,” said Mr. Decensi. “We look forward to moving ahead with our new owners as we continue to address the evolving end-to-end needs of our customers.”
AEI, through its first fund, acquired BHI from Harvest Partners in July 2017. During its ownership term BHI grew both organically and through five add-on acquisitions including Florida-based DBE Utility Services (2021), Alabama-based Coastal Electrical Construction (2020), California-based TechCom International (2020), Texas-based Plaska Transmission Line (2019), and New York-based D&D Power (2018).
“AEI is proud to have worked with BHI as it completed five add-on acquisitions in the transmission and distribution and engineering spaces and continued to grow its market share in the nuclear and renewables markets,” said Michael Greene, a managing partner of AEI. “BHI has cemented its reputation as a market-leading service provider in the utility sector focused on carbon-neutral technologies, and we know the company will continue to perform at the highest level going forward.”
Westinghouse Electric Company is a provider of nuclear products and services to utilities including service and maintenance, instrumentation, control and design of power plants. The company, headquartered in the Pittsburgh suburb of Cranberry Woods, was acquired in 2018 by Brookfield Business Partners (NYSE: BBU), a publicly traded spin-out of Brookfield Asset Management and the owner of its business services and industrial portfolio companies.
Boca Raton-based AEI invests in the aerospace and defense, power generation, and specialty industrial sectors. Typical company targets will have from $50 million to $500 million of revenue. In July 2018, the firm held a final hard-cap closing of its second private equity fund, AE Industrial Partners Fund II LP, with $1.36 billion in commitments.
Baird and Harris Williams were the financial advisors to AEI.
© 2022 Private Equity Professional | April 20, 2022
AE Industrial Partners (AEI) has agreed to sell its portfolio company BHI Energy to Westinghouse Electric Company, a portfolio company of Brookfield Business Partners.
“AEI is proud to have worked with BHI as it completed five add-on acquisitions in the transmission and distribution and engineering spaces and continued to grow its market share in the nuclear and renewables markets,” said Michael Greene, a managing partner of AEI. “BHI has cemented its reputation as a market-leading service provider in the utility sector focused on carbon-neutral technologies, and we know the company will continue to perform at the highest level going forward.”
