DBay acquires Eddie Stobart for £55m

DouglasBay Capital III Fund acquired a 51% stake in the company. The firm agreed to inject £55m in new financing into the group's operations through payment-in-kind facilities and also negotiated a new revolving credit facility of £20m.

DouglasBay III held a final close on €335m in May 2019.

Shareholders included Woodford Investment Management with a 25% stake, Stobart Holding Company with an 11.8% stake, and DBay with a 10.1% stake. The company was prepared to appoint Deloitte as administrator, were shareholders to reject DBay's offer. Following the suspension of its shares on the AIM stock exchange in August, an investigation into the company's accounts was launched. Eddie Stobart's debt stood at £155m as of 31 May 2019 and now exceeds £200m.

Former Stobart Group chief executive Andrew Tinkler had submitted a rival rescue proposal, prior to acceptance of the offer. The proposal would have injected up to £80m in equity funding into Eddie Stobart to repay existing debt.

Previous funding
DBay acquired 49% of the business in 2014. Eddie Stobart then listed on AIM in 2017.

Company
Headquartered in Warrington and founded in 1960, Eddie Stobart offers transportation, warehousing and logistics services. As of 2018, the company employed 6,600 people and had 43 operating centres across the UK and Europe.

Eddie Stobart reported underlying EBITDA of £62.9m from revenues of £843.1m in 2018, up from an underlying EBITDA of £55.3m from revenues of £623.9m in 2017, according to the 2018 annual report.

People
Eddie Stobart Logistics – Sébastien Desreumaux (CEO).

Advisers
Equity - Investec (corporate finance); Shearman & Sterling (legal).
Company – Rothschild (corporate finance).

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