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Although the water level from our record snowfall has so far
conspired to keep us from traditional fishing, this spring
has found us hard at work at fishing of another type -- chasing
several exciting investment opportunities. No news to report
on the catching front yet as a few of the deals ended up going
away (for what turned out to be good reasons) and others are
still in discussions.
We continue to come across a wide variety of opportunities
within our niche -- family owned and closely held businesses
that are looking for a partner to provide capital for ownership
transition and growth. Some of the situations that made life
interesting this spring include a management buyout of a beef
processing facility, a management buyout of a digital pre-press
company, a management recap of a chain of convenience stores,
a merger of two family owned grocery store chains and a buyout
of a costume jewelry manufacturer. Although dissimilar on
the surface, in each case a strong team of owners and/or managers
was prepared to put its own money to work alongside ours to
achieve growth in revenue and profitability at a company with
a proven track record.
Our first investment, the management recap of Trussway Ltd.,
continues to perform well. We have worked closely with the
management team on a number of issues which are yielding positive
results. With the housing market forecast to remain strong
and interesting options for consolidation in this fragmented
industry, we are confident that Trussway's strong performance
will continue.
We are now, with the addition of Blake Morris, fully staffed.
He comes from First Boston's M&A group by way of Stanford
B-School, Cannon Associates, Bain & Company and Rice University.
We were relieved that he was able to start right in the middle
of this hectic period and sent him traveling on his second
day on the job.
We encourage you to call us with interesting investment opportunities
within the closely held and family owned business market.
We look for transactions where we can invest $2 million to
$10 million in equity capital in established companies with
$25 million or more in revenue in industries that are not
overly volatile. Should you call, we guarantee you a thoughtful
and timely response. Watch for us soon on the World Wide Web....
Best regards,
Tad Kelly & John Flanigan
511
Sixteenth Street, Suite 600 Denver, CO 80202
Telephone: (303) 571-0100 Facsimile: (303) 571-0114
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