Before we dive into this week’s topic,
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Hi all - this week, we’re diving into another unsexy roll up story in…septic, drain & sewer. While it’s been personally thought provoking to be touching on these unsexy industries, a buy-and-build doesn’t always have to be. Case in point: Providence’s roll up of musical theaters ATG Entertainment is in talks to be acquired for $6 billion after a 13-year run. We wrote about musical theater rollup with ATG here if you want to check it out.
PE Playbook: Septic, Drain & Sewer
This article was supported by RTC’s Research Analyst Mark Scavo.
State of Play
Wind River Environmental (“WRE”) is an interesting case study not only for the niche industry it’s in but because of its founding story. Like some of you, the founder John O’Connell was a white-collar executive turned acquisition entrepreneur.
John O’Connell, Co-Founder and Ex-CEO of Wind River Environmental
John spent the first half of his career in IT, finance, and operations at Marshalls, Sears, and AutoZone, where he was Vice President of International IT. None of that has anything to do with septic tanks. In 1999, he formed Wind River Environmental with the deliberate intent of consolidating a fragmented liquid waste industry through acquisition, using a Massachusetts honey-wagon business that was founded back in 1946.
By 2017, when Gryphon Investors became the platform's third institutional capital partner, WRE had completed dozens of acquisitions. This was never really a septic company that PE discovered. It was a serial acquisition platform.
Let's dive in.