Brown Gibbons Lang & Company Sells Victor Oolitic Stone Company to Audax Group
Brown Gibbons Lang & Company (BGL) announced today the sale of its client Victor Oolitic Stone Company (Victor Oolitic) to Audax Group, a private equity investment firm.
Since the company’s founding in 1898, Victor Oolitic has supplied the highest quality Indiana limestone, in block, slab, sill, and other finished forms, to the North American and global stone trade. The limestone quarried by the Company makes an excellent building material due to its beauty, durability, and machinability. Applications include use in the construction of large commercial, educational, and government buildings, monuments, ornamental accents, high-end residential construction, and building interiors. Victor Oolitic is the industry’s largest quarrier and raw-material-supplier of Indiana limestone. The company’s quarry and plant operations are located on over 2,400 acres of prime quarry land in the heart of the Indiana limestone district in Bloomington, Indiana.
Over the past two years the Company made substantial capital investments in quarrying and slab production capacity. As a result, the Company has the most advanced dimension limestone extraction and processing operations of any competing producer in North America. The existing management team, which also included the principal shareholders and descendants of the company’s founders, sought an advisor to maximize the company’s value for estate and wealth diversification. The shareholders of Victor Oolitic, including minority investor CID Equity Partners, engaged BGL to manage the sale of the Company due to BGL’s extensive experience in the building and construction materials industry.
John L. Edgeworth, a principal shareholder and President and Chief Executive of Victor Oolitic, said, “After a lengthy and vigorous search process, we arrived at BGL as the stand-out logical choice. Their depth of experience in our product space was un-matched, and their execution of our deal was outstanding. As a result, we have partnered with great people and an excellent organization in Audax Group, and we are very excited about our continued growth prospects.”
Bill Watkins, director at BGL, said, “We received substantial interest from buyers, particularly financial investors that valued Victor Oolitic’s strong market share, exceptional cash flow characteristics, and favorable long-term growth opportunities. In addition, two of the existing shareholders, who have led the successful growth of the company, desired to have an ongoing, meaningful role in the company’s continued growth and will remain minority shareholders in the company. Taken together, these factors created an extremely attractive acquisition opportunity.”
Geoffrey S. Rehnert, Co-CEO of Audax Group, said, “Victor Oolitic is a market leader that has grown consistently and generated strong cash flow over a long period of time. We are excited to work with existing management to continue to grow the company and broaden the end market applications for the product.”
About Audax Group
Audax Group, founded in 1999, is a leading investor in middle market companies. With offices in Boston and New York, Audax manages in excess of $1.5 billion in equity and mezzanine debt capital. For more information, visit the Audax website at https://www.audaxgroup.com/.