GAITHERSBURG, Md.—The Brickman Group, based here, closed on a recapitalization of the company on January 23. Brickman is the largest landscape maintenance company in the United States, approaching annual revenues of $500 million.
The transaction was undertaken to provide an exit strategy for CIVC Partners Brickman’s private equity partner since 1998, and to refinance Brickman’s public bonds, which were issued in 2002, with more favorable private debt, according to a release from the company.
“Nine years is a long time to be partners with a private equity group like CIVC,” Scott Brickman, CEO and president of the company, tells Landscape Management. The relationship lasted so long because both partners — Brickman and CIVC, based in Chicago — had established an excellent relationship, he claimed.
To facilitate the recent recapitalization, Brickman brought in Los Angeles-based Leonard Green & Partners, a new private equity partner.
“We went through an exhaustive process to find a new partner like CIVC who shared our values and we are thrilled to have selected Leonard Green,” says President and CEO Scott Brickman. “We picked the partner.”
After the transaction Leonard Green will own slightly less than 50 percent of the equity, leaving the Brickman family, management and existing stockholders with a majority interest.
“This transaction will not have any effect on Brickman’s leadership, operations or strategic plans,” stresses Brickman. “Following this transaction, nothing will change with regards to our operations or the direction of our business in any way. I, along with the leadership here at the company, will continue to run the company as we have for many years pursuing our vision of building strong teams, which provide outstanding quality and service to our customers. This transaction provides us with a great new partner and a capital structure which will take us into the future.”
One of the benefits of the transaction is that it provides an opportunity for Brickman’s nearly 200 management team members to receive liquidity for some of their equity holdings while continuing to own a significant stake in the company going forward.
“It is very rewarding for me to see that nearly two thirds of the management equity value was reinvested in our business,” continues Scott Brickman. “This is simply outstanding. I see this as a very strong indication of the continuing enthusiasm of management to grow the business and serve customers as we have done in the past. I am so very pleased for our entire management
CIVC acquired its stake in the company in a leveraged recapitalization in 1998, the same year that then 35-year-old Scott Brickman became CEO of the company. That infusion of venture capital allowed the Brickman Group, led by Scott Brickman, taking over from his father Theodore “Dick” Brickman Jr., to aggressively grow its network of branch locations across the country by acquisition.
In 2002 the company went through its second recapitalization through a $150 million senior subordinated debt offering, according to The Deal, an online product of the New York Times.
Long-envied by other landscape operations for its efficient services delivery systems, the Brickman Group recorded revenues of approximately $100 million in 1998. Today the company’s more than 135 branches with 6,000 employees in 23 states, generated about $460 million in revenues its latest fiscal year.
Two of the company’s most notable recent acquisitions included Lakewood Landscaping, Troy, MI, and, this past fall, Mike Rorie’s Groundmasters, the market-leading landscape maintenance operation in the tri-state area surrounding Cincinnati, Ohio. Sources put the sale price at approximately $30 million.
