Case Study:

Ports Petroleum Company, Inc. - Exclusive Sale/Divestiture

Situation

• Based on a long standing relationship, Ports Petroleum Company, Inc. approached Matrix about potentially selling all or the majority of Ports’ assets.  Ports recognized that we were uniquely qualified to handle such an engagement due to our understanding of the complexity of Ports’ retail network, which included sites from South Dakota and Nebraska, to Mississippi, Georgia and seven other states in between.
• Matrix analyzed historical financial information, collected site specific information about each unit, and reviewed third-party and tenant leases in order to provide Ports with valuation of its retail assets as well as the company as a whole.

Objective

• Recognizing that Ports would benefit from either the sale of a large portion of their retail network or from a sale of the company’s equity, as it is organized as a C-corporation, Matrix customized a sale process that would publicly offer the retail assets to as many buyers as possible, while concurrently executing a process to solicit bids for the company’s equity.

Solution

• Matrix broadly marketed the opportunity to acquire the stores, utilizing their proprietary database along with advertisements strategically placed in regional and ethnic news media.
• As a result, we collected over 350 Confidentiality Agreements from prospective buyers that represented individual single store operators, regional marketers, larger jobbers and truck center operators.  Additionally, Matrix entered into preliminary discussions with three prospective buyers for the entire company.
• Matrix disseminated information regarding each site through our website and we were in daily communication with potential buyers throughout the marketing process, making sure to balance the interest for stores that covered such a large portion of the country.
• Matrix presented Ports with two options: sell a large portion of the retail sites, while retaining the most profitable ones, or enter into a contract with a prospective buyer for the company’s equity at a comparable post-tax valuation.
• Ports selected the first option, selling the retail assets for a value that was more than 8.0x aggregate store level EBITDA, while retaining the higher performing assets.