“I can’t say enough about the tremendous efforts and diligence of Paul Reuter, Denny Ruben, Jake Johnson and the entire NRC team in getting this complicated transaction to the finish line. There were several challenging aspects to this deal, and the NRC team did a masterful job of navigating all of the issues and getting us to the closing.”
– Bill Douglass
Chief Executive Officer | W. Douglass Distributing, Ltd.
Assets
Real estate located at the company’s Sherman, Texas headquarters and elsewhere in Texas and Oklahoma, as well as equipment, rolling stock and other personal property utilized by the company in connection with its wholesale fuel and related businesses. Those businesses consist of a wholesale fuel business, a commercial business which includes fuel, lubricant and diesel exhaust fluid (DEF), a propane business and a fuel carrier business.
Engagement
NRC was engaged by the company to sell both its convenience store assets, consisting of 22 Lone Star Food Stores in and around Sherman, Texas, as well as its wholesale fuel and related businesses, which were based at its Sherman, Texas facilities. NRC determined that the best strategy was to run two parallel confidential sale processes for the retail and the wholesale assets. The company distributed more than 200 million gallons of fuel annually. The propane business had more than 4,600 residential customers, the wholesale business had more than 150 major customers, and their commercial business had more than 2,800 fuel, lubricant and DEF customers. The company also maintained an extensive fuel carrier business and operated in part through an agreement with Old World Industries in order to provide product transportation and on-site manufacturing of DEF, antifreeze and washer fluid products. This part of the engagement was especially challenging due to the fact that very few companies conduct all of the same businesses that Douglass did, and the company had expressed a strong preference to sell its entire wholesale and related business operations to a single buyer, in order to maintain its headquarters facility in Sherman and to encourage the ultimate buyer to retain all or most of the company’s employees at Sherman. NRC reached out to several industry participants in the wholesale and related business sectors, and quickly concluded that the best buyer for this business was Offen Petroleum LLC. Both the company and NRC have known Bill Gallagher and his management team at Offen for several years, and it seemed like this was a logical and perfect fit for both parties. In addition, Offen had been looking for a suitable acquisition in Texas in order to establish an operations center and accelerate its growth in the Texas marketplace.