Situation
Cheshire Oil Company (“Cheshire” or the “Company”), headquartered in Keene, New Hampshire, owned and operated 10 high volume and highly profitable Citgo-branded “T-Bird Mini Mart” convenience stores in southwest New Hampshire and Vermont. The Company also operated several other businesses, including the sale of fuels to commercial customers, retail home heating oil delivery, and HVAC & burner servicing.

The Company employed approximately 150 people, and was led by the management team of Mr. James Robertson and his daughter, Ms. JoJi Robertson. The Robertson family had operated Cheshire Oil Company since 1921 and had developed an extremely loyal base of customers across its convenience store network and HVAC & burner service businesses.

The Robertson family sought to exit the convenience store, commercial fuels, heating oil, and HVAC businesses to monetize these valuable assets for estate planning purposes.

Objective
To customize, execute, and complete a confidential sale process in a way that would allow the Robertson family to realize maximum after-tax value upon the sale of the Company’s various businesses.

Solution
Matrix provided merger and acquisition advisory services to Cheshire, which included valuation advisory, marketing the business through two confidential, structured sale processes, and negotiation of the transactions. The bifurcated sale process included a buyer pool of convenience store-centric buyers, home heating oil buyers, and several large, diversified strategic companies with an interest in expanding both their convenience store and home heating operations.

Multiple offers were received, and ultimately Global Partners, LP (NYSE: GLP) (“Global”) was selected as the buyer for the convenience store assets and Dead River Company (“Dead River”) was selected as the buyer for the other divisions.

Matrix assisted in the negotiation of the two separate asset purchase agreements and coordinated the due diligence processes.

The transactions with Global and Dead River both closed in July 2018, and substantially all of the Company’s employees were retained by the acquirers.