Prospect Partners has acquired Bland Landscaping Company in partnership with the company’s senior management.
Bland Landscaping is a full-service provider of landscape design, installation, enhancement, and maintenance services for commercial properties and high-end residential estates. The company primarily serves offices, hospitals, universities, municipalities, and homeowner associations statewide, including the Triangle, Triad, and metropolitan Charlotte regions. Bland Landscaping was founded in 1976 and is headquartered near Raleigh in Apex, NC (www.blandlandscaping.com).
The company’s in-house team of nearly 300 landscape experts includes professional turfgrass and horticulture managers, landscape designers, chemical technicians, and floriculturists. Second generation owners Kurt Bland, President and CEO, and Matt Bland, CFO and COO, lead the company.
“This is an exciting time for Bland Landscaping as we are actively building upon our company’s pioneering legacy,” said Kurt Bland. “As we pursue our goal of becoming the leading regional provider of the complete life cycle of commercial landscape management services, Prospect Partners offers proven expertise growing niche companies like ours as well as investment capital that will help us continue to be the best at what we do.”
“Bland Landscaping is a rapidly growing niche market leader long known for its superb commercial landscape maintenance and management services, innovation, commitment to the environment, and great customer relationships,” said Erik Maurer, a Principal of Prospect Partners. “We look forward to supporting management as they continue to scale the company and expand its regional presence.”
With the buy of Bland Landscaping closed, Prospect Partners is now seeking add-on acquisitions of well-respected, local providers of commercial landscape maintenance services based in the Southeast and the Mid-Atlantic states.
Prospect Partners focuses exclusively on management-led leveraged recapitalizations and acquisitions of niche market leaders with revenues of less than $75 million. Areas of interest include niche manufacturing, distribution, and specialty service markets. Since 1998, Prospect Partners has built 50 platforms by investing in more than 150 businesses. The firm has $470 million of capital under management and is based in Chicago (www.prospect-partners.com).
Bland Landscaping is Prospect Partners’ 50th portfolio company overall, and the 14th in the firm’s current fund, Prospect Partners III LP, which closed in 2010 with $200 million of capital.
CCG Advisors, an Atlanta-based mergers and acquisitions firm (www.ccgadv.com), represented Bland Landscaping in this transaction. Freeport Financial Partners (www.freeportfinancial.com) provided financing for the recapitalization.
© 2018 Private Equity Professional | January 11, 2018
