Cobalt Service Partners, a platform formed by Alpine Investors in September 2023, has acquired Piedmont Door Solutions.
Piedmont Door designs, installs, and maintains commercial doors throughout the Southeast, Southwest, and Mid-Atlantic with locations in North Carolina (3), Texas (2), South Carolina, Maryland, Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. Piedmont is active across numerous segments of the commercial door sector including manual, automatic, revolving, and security doors and entrances, and has a specialty in high-stakes, high-traffic environments like hospitals and schools.
Piedmont, led by CEO Chris Mitchell, was founded in 2001 by Pat Keane and is headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. Post-closing, Mr. Mitchell – who invested in Piedmont in 2016 – will continue as CEO of Piedmont under Cobalt ownership.
“I feel tremendous pride in what we’ve accomplished over the past 22 years and gratitude that Piedmont’s legacy will live on under Cobalt,” said Mr. Keane. “I couldn’t be more excited about the possibility of Piedmont’s model and mission expanding nationwide.”
“I couldn’t be more excited for Piedmont’s future,” said Mr. Mitchell. “We’ve achieved so much as a team, and this partnership with Cobalt enables us to go faster and bigger than we ever imagined would be possible. It also secures Piedmont’s future for generations to come. On behalf of the entire Piedmont team, we’re thrilled for what lies ahead.”
New York City-based Cobalt continues to seek additional acquisitions with an interest in several sectors including overhead doors and docks, commercial doors, security gates, access control systems, and video surveillance systems.
Leading Cobalt as co-CEOs are Tyler Hoffman and Anthony Gonzalez. Mr. Hoffman was previously the CEO of Radicle Health, a portfolio company of Alpine and a software business that completed eight acquisitions during his tenure from 2021 to 2023.
Mr. Gonzalez, an executive in residence at Alpine since March 2023, served as an Ohio congressman from 2019 to 2023. Earlier in his career, he was the chief operating officer at InformedK12, a San Francisco-based provider of education-focused workflow automation software; and he was the vice president of business development at Beneco, a portfolio company of Alpine and an Arizona-based provider of employee benefits and compliance services focused on the contractor sector. Mr. Gonzalez has his undergraduate degree from Ohio State and his MBA from Stanford. He was a first round-draft pick of the Indianapolis Colts in 2007 and played for the NFL team until 2012.
“We’re thrilled to launch Cobalt Service Partners to offer founders a long-term home for their business and support the blue-collar workers driving their communities forward. We couldn’t be happier to start this journey with Chris and the incredible Piedmont team,” said Messrs. Hoffman and Gonzalez in a released statement.
San Francisco-based Alpine invests in control buyouts, majority recapitalizations, and corporate carve-outs of recurring revenue software, business services, and consumer services businesses that have enterprise values from $5 million to $400 million and EBITDA of $1 million to $40 million. Alpine is currently investing out of its $4.9 billion ninth fund.
© 2023 Private Equity Professional | December 8, 2023
