BlueGem Capital Partners rises its stake to 90% in the capital of Fintyre, the largest wholesale distributor of aftermarket tyres in Italy, MF-Milano Finanza writes today.
BlueGem bought shares both from Italy’s mid-market private equity firm Synergo sgr  (see here the press release) and from old shareholders.
The  private equity firm founded by  Marco Capello together with Emilio Di Spiezio Sardo and Marco Anatriello (all former Merrill Lynch bankers) will back now Fintyre’s further growth which is to come also thanks to the development of new businesses.
New chairman and ceo was appointed last April Mauro Pessi, who has a long history in the tyre sector as he used to serve as ceo in Pirelli South America, Pirelli North America and Pirelli Italia, Mr. Pessi wil be joined by two co-managing directors:  Nicola Melillo (finance and operations) and Alessandro Bruchi (marketing&sales).
BlueGem invested in Fintyre in 2009 subscribing a capital increase for a 32.7% stake( trough BlueGem Cooperatief Ua)Â in oder to support the acquisition of All Pneus, a company based in Bergamo (Northern italy), joining then two funds by Sofipa sgr (Sofipa Equity Fund and Sofipa Equity Fund II) who previously had invested in the company in 2007 and 2008 buying a 38.6% stake. The rest of the capital was instead still owned by older shareholders of some companies which have been bought by Fintyre in the previous years, with Orobica Investimenti srl (former All Pneus’s shareholders( owning a 18.24% stake.
Now BlueGem owns the 90% of Fintyre capital, while the remainig 10% is owned by Orobica Investimenti (about 7%) and by the Saioni family.
The deal value has not been undisclosed but it is reasonable to think that the enterprise value of Fintyre may equal 7-8x the company’s ebitda as the buyer is a private equity fund and the company operates in the B2B sector. The last m&a transactions made by industrial tyres makers on B2C companies have instead been conducted  on quite higher valuations: for example, last May French Michelin bought the UK online leading tyres seller Blackcircles paying 50 million pounds that is about 1.5x the company’s 2014 sales which were somewhat up from 2013’s 28 million pounds revenues in 2013.
Founded in Empoli (Tuscan Region) in the Seventies with the name of  Penuservice, Fintyre counts today more then 4 million tyres distributed in 2014 and nine warehouses and serves all different segments of the market (cars, tracks, industrial and agricultural veichles).
Fintyre reached  255 million euro in revenues in 2014 (from 239 millions in 2013) and targets 260 million in 2015. It reached an ebitda in 2014 in line with the year before, when ebitda was 12 million euros and had a net financial debt of 15 million euros.
“Fintyre is one of the most profitable companies in Europe in the sector. In the last three years it made 70 million euros of cash so that its financial debt is now down to almost zero. In the next three years we expect the company will make the same amount of cash”, Mr. Pessi told MF-Milano Finanza,
“BlueGem’s new financial effort will back the development of Fintyre’s business. The Italian market is still much fragmented and there are margins to grow both productivity and efficiency”, Mr. Pessi said.
