Stamford private equity firm acquires Planet Fitness franchisee for $675 million
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STAMFORD — Olympus Companions has acquired a Planet Physical fitness franchisee for additional than $675 million, highlighting a single of the busiest-at any time periods for the Stamford private equity company.
The acquisition of Austin, Texas-centered Excel Fitness Holdings will increase the amount of corporations to 13 in Olympus’ portfolio. Excel serves practically 750,000 Earth Exercise users across far more than 90 places that it operates in Austin Dallas-Fort Value Raleigh-Durham, N.C. Tulsa, Okla. northwest Arkansas and across Virginia. Supported by Olympus, it aims to operate extra than 100 locations by the conclude of 2022.
The offer comes as other providers in Olympus’ portfolio are flourishing. Olympus officials explained their business has returned a total of roughly $1.5 billion in dividends and sale proceeds to about 40 institutional traders in the previous eight months — an Olympus-record distribution to traders in a a person-yr period of time.
“We’re rather joyful with the condition of the portfolio and how our firms are undertaking,” Olympus founder and handling spouse Rob Morris claimed in an interview. “In the case of the Excel Health acquisition, of the several health and fitness golf equipment and gymnasiums that are countrywide franchises, Earth Health and fitness seems to have been the most resilient with respect to COVID. We imagine we can continue on to construct out that product in geographies adjacent to existing destinations.”
Among other the latest specials, Olympus introduced in March the acquisition for close to $450 million of Irving, Texas-based mostly Omega Environmental Systems, a distributor of automotive air-conditioning solutions.
“They have an fantastic market place posture with distribution of parts wanted to maintenance or rebuild air-conditioning units in cars and trucks. These fellas provide every person,” Morris reported. “And it’s also an great platform, which we can use to buy other businesses to construct on to this administration group to provide related types of products in the following-market.”
Previous September, Olympus bought pet-merchandise supplier Petmate for approximately $700 million. Of that complete, it distributed about $400 million to traders.
Manufacturing 10-determine dividends
Amid the latest acquisitions, Olympus officials explained quite a few of the companies in Olympus’ portfolio have been doing strongly in the previous year.
Among the the best performers are Soliant, a provider of health and fitness treatment and training staffing solutions Tank Keeping, a manufacturer of polyethylene tanks and containers and Vaco, a supplier of enterprise consulting and talent companies.
Primarily based on those people 3 firms’ increasing earnings, Olympus officials explained their organization has distributed about $1.1 billion in dividends to buyers in the previous couple of months.
“When we acquire providers, we attempt to get types that are equipped to do reasonably properly, even in adverse ailments these kinds of as COVID,” Morris said. “That happened right here, so we had been delighted to distribute $1.5 billion truly worth of revenue (dividends, blended with proceeds from the Petmate sale), on the heels of a big financial softening prompted by COVID.”
Olympus manages money totaling additional than $8.5 billion, predominantly on behalf of company pension money, endowment resources and point out-sponsored retirement programs.
Numerous traders contacted by Hearst Connecticut Media Team declined to disclose how substantially they received from Olympus’ modern dividend distribution, but mentioned they were pleased with their share of the proceeds and happy with Olympus’ general performance.
“They have a incredibly steady workforce, and their general performance is as good as we would have expected,” claimed John Kyles, a handling director at Darien-primarily based Portfolio Advisors, a middle-market place non-public asset administration expert with about $38 billion in belongings underneath administration.
Other investors include London-primarily based Wellcome Belief, 1 of the world’s most significant charitable foundations and wellbeing investigation funders, supported by an endowment of around $50 billion. Wellcome has much more than $100 million invested with Olympus, and it has been an trader with the firm for more than 20 years.
“Olympus is a single of our oldest associations, which testifies to their success,” reported Robert Coke, Wellcome’s controlling director of non-public equity. “They have normally taken on intricate and challenged firms and turned them into developing and interesting organizations that have shipped fantastic returns for shareholders and created careers.”
Morris mentioned he was confident about Olympus’ long run, regardless of the volatility in the world-wide financial state. The firm’s workplaces are in the Metro Heart sophisticated, at 1 Station Area, throughout the street from the downtown Stamford Metro-North Railroad station. It has about two-dozen personnel.
“The large points that we fret about and are getting to act on consistently have to do with inflationary pressures. There are tremendous rises in commodity inputs in just about every small business, this kind of as resin for making plastics and the price tag of sugar in the baked-goods market,” Morris explained. “But in general, our portfolio is faring well — so we’re satisfied.”
pschott@stamfordadvocate.com twitter: @paulschott
