PRIVATE HOLDINGS

We invest in privately held companies with established operations.  We are flexible as to the reasons for capital (e.g. growth, management buyout, generational transition, private equity exit) and how the investment is structured (e.g. minority, majority).

With every investment, we do have one mandatory requirement – senior management must have a meaningful amount of their own capital in the company.  We consider this a deal-breaker.   

Our investments are similar to what we look for in public holdings.  Most, if not all, of the following characteristics:

Investment Philosophy

Compelling valuation 
  • An appealing valuation relative to existing free cash flow and future growth using conservative assumptions that create an asymmetric, favorable outcome.

Competitive advantage
  • Consolidating markets
  • Niche orientation
  • Low cost operator
  • Localized scale
  • Exclusive distribution
  • Premium product/service positioning

Sizable reinvestment opportunities
  • Businesses with high free cash flow returns on tangible assets.
  • Companies that have "high return on incremental capital" internal re-investment opportunities due to industry secular growth.
  • Tuck-in acquisition opportunities if management has a demonstrated history of success integrating acquisitions.

Essentiality
  • Businesses where there is a very high probability they will be around in 10 years and whose economics are not likely to differ over that time

Owner operators
  • We prefer businesses operated by founders or executives who took career risk in leading a business spun-off from a parent company.  
REPRESENTATIVE INVESTMENTS (CURRENT & NON-CURRENT)
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Collections-focused distressed credit purchaser - founded in 2004, Crown Asset Management is a professional receivables management and purchasing firm with extensive experience in the acquisition, collection and successful liquidation of distressed consumer receivables.  Crown purchases portfolios for its own business and also manages portfolios for other firms in the Accounts Receivable Management (ARM) industry.  www.crownasset.com 
Petroleum equipment service provider and distributor - Jacksonville, FL-based Guardian Fueling Technologies services, installs and distributes equipment for retail (gas stations, convenience stores), commercial and municipal customers that sell fuel or consume it as part of fleet operations.  The company has close relationships with several leading equipment manufacturers, including Gilbarco Veeder-Root (subsidiary of Danaher), OPW (subsidiary of Dover Corp), Verifone and Franklin Electric.  In 2015, Guardian was nominated for both the Jacksonville Business Journal's Fast 50 and Florida's Fast 100 fastest growing private companies.   www.guardianfueltech.com 
Global wine closure manufacturer - originally conceived as an entrepreneur’s solution to cork taint and bottle variation, Nomacorc is now one of the world's largest producers of wine closures.  Since the company’s inception in 1999, Nomacorc co-extruded wine corks have become a trusted and widely used way to close wine, protecting more than 2.4 billion bottles of wine around the world each year.  www.nomacorc.com
Industrial gas distributor - TMG is an Atlanta-based manager of medical and industrial gas supply chains at more than 9,000 locations in all 50 states.  Through an investment partner, we helped sponsor the buyout of TMG with industry-experienced operating executives.  www.tmgco.com
Healthcare Real Estate
Healthcare facilities (acquired) - with an Atlanta-based real estate partner, we funded the development of healthcare facilities in a familiar market.  The facilities were subsequently acquired by a healthcare REIT.