• One European transportation company is moving away from the U.S. bus market. And another is rushing in. FlixMobility, a German startup that's raised more than $1 billion in venture funding since 2019, agreed to buy the famed Greyhound Lines brand from the U.K.'s First Group. The deal reportedly has an enterprise value of $46 million and will result in $172 million in cash proceeds for FirstGroup; TechCrunch has more financial details, for the curious. In prior U.S. divestitures, FirstGroup sold three Greyhound bus facilities late last year for £102 million (about $141 million), and in April, it agreed to sell its First Student and First Transit bus networks to private equity firm EQT for $4.6 billion. The company bought Greyhound in 2007 through a take-private buyout worth $3.6 billion.
• Once again, Twitter is turning to M&A in 2021 to build out its roster of product offerings. The latest move is a deal to acquire Sphere, a London-based startup that operates a group chat app. My immediate takeaway is that there must already be some sort of Twittersphere branding in the works. Twitter has conducted at least a half-dozen acquisitions so far this year, with targets including ad-blocking startup Scroll, newsletter specialist Revue and news-finding platform Brief. Earlier this month, meanwhile, the company agreed to sell its MoPub mobile ad business to AppLovin for $1.05 billion.
• Fast-casual restaurant chain Portillo's raised $405 million in its IPO today and saw its shares soar another 45% during their first morning of trading, taking the company's market cap north of $2 billion. Owned by Berkshire Partners since 2014, Portillo's priced its listing at $20 per share, the top end of its anticipated range. The purveyor of hot dogs, sausages and other Chicago-style street food logged $455.5 million in 2020 revenue, down 5% from the year prior, but it bounced back from the worst of the pandemic with $258 million in revenue during the first half of 2021. About 62% of its sales so far this year have come via drive thru, compared to just 41% in 2019.
• It was a more disappointing debut day for Vita Coco, a seller of coconut water. The New York-based company priced its listing at $15 per share, well below its expected range of $18 to $21, and its shares slumped even more as the day progressed, falling to $14.50 by late afternoon. The company and its investors (including China's Reignwood Group and Belgium's Verlinvest) raised $172.5 million in the IPO, which valued Vita Coco at $832 million.
• And there will be no debut day at all (at least not any time soon) for Winc, a third company in the food and beverage sector that was charting a path to the public market. The operator of a subscription wine service postponed an IPO today that was in line to raise some $75 million, joining a growing list of companies that have walked away from planned listings in recent weeks as a previously sterling stock market has begun to waver. Winc has raised about $83 million in prior venture capital and was valued at $195 million with a funding round in June, with backers including Bessemer Venture Partners and Crosscut Ventures, according to PitchBook.
• KKR is increasing its footprint at one of New York City's tallest skyscrapers. The firm agreed to buy a controlling stake in the observation deck that juts out from the 100th floor of 30 Hudson Yards, the 103-story colossus that opened for business in 2019 on Manhattan's West Side, with Bloomberg reporting a price north of $500 million. KKR is already one of the biggest tenants at the building, where its corporate headquarters occupy 10 floors and more than 340,000 square feet. The observation deck, which is called Edge and is open to the public, will continue to be managed by the larger Hudson Yards development.
• The first hostile takeover bid in the history of Japanese banking could be coming soon. Shinsei Bank said today that it will reject an unsolicited acquisition offer worth some $1.1 billion from SBI Holdings, a Japanese financial services group, which could set the table for SBI to take its offer directly to Shinsei shareholders. Shinsei called for SBI to increase its current offer of 2,000 yen per share and to increase the number of shares it is trying to buy, but SBI indicated that it has no plans to do so. The company is currently trying to grow its stake in Shinsei to 48%, which would give it effective control of the bank but remain below the 50% threshold that would require approval from Japanese regulators. A meeting of Shinsei shareholders is scheduled for Nov. 25.
• After the collapse of previous talks with a blank-check vehicle backed by Chamath Palihapitiya, the owner of SoulCycle has set its sights on a different SPAC. Equinox is in talks to go public by combining with Ares Acquisition Corp., per a Bloomberg report, a move that would come as Equinox tries to rev its business back up after in-person fitness classes of all kinds were disrupted by the pandemic. Other companies in the space have been striking deals lately, too, led by Mindbody's agreement to acquire ClassPass in a deal reportedly worth more than $1 billion. This spring, Equinox was said to be negotiating a potential merger with Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp. VI that could have resulted in a $7.5 billion valuation. The Ares Management-sponsored SPAC with which Equinox is now said to be negotiating raised $1 billion in its IPO in February.
• The race to buy the Equans services unit from French utility giant Engie continues to come into focus. Bain Capital plans to partner with French holding company Fimalac on a joint bid for the business, according to local newspaper Les Echoes, with Bain set to hold a majority stake if its offer is successful. The two could also bring on Bpifrance as a smaller co-investor, the report said. Engie is currently auctioning off Equans, which installs and maintains electrical equipment, telecom equipment and other utility services, reportedly with hopes of valuing the unit at up to €6 billion (about $7 billion). French industrial conglomerates Bouygues and Eiffage are believed to be the other two primary bidders, while would-be private equity suitors including Apollo Global Management and CVC Capital Partners have fallen by the wayside.
• The Carlyle Group has enlisted advisers to coordinate a sale process for Precoat Metals, with hopes of fetching some $1.5 billion for the maker of metal coatings, according to Bloomberg. Precoat is one of the two main units of Sequa, a conglomerate that Carlyle acquired for $2.7 billion in a take-private buyout in 2007. Its other primary subsidiary, Chromalloy, provides aftermarket repair services for jet engines. Precoat's coatings are used in houses, appliances, vehicles and other end-markets.
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