Situation
Dillon Wooten, president of Wooten Oil Company, contacted Matrix to help evaluate his 12 store chain in Eastern North Carolina. Dillon and his business partner, Rick Sumner, asked the EMR team at Matrix to value the stores and discuss sale methods that would maximize the value of the assets.

Matrix collected financial and property data from Wooten and developed a preliminary valuation of the stores based on store-level financial performance. To add context to the preliminary valuation, we visited each store and evaluated the real estate and competition in order to gain more insight and tighten the valuation range.

Objective
Matrix discussed multiple sale processes with Wooten, evaluating the pros and cons of each method, so they could decide on a process that would balance their requirements for confidentiality and sale proceeds.

Wooten engaged Matrix to manage a public sale process that would offer the stores as individual assets where prospective buyers would have the opportunity to submit offers on one, some, or all of the stores.

Solution
Matrix reached out to major oil companies, regional jobbers, international companies, drugstore & restaurant chains and individual buyers through an advertising and calling effort.

Simultaneous to our marketing effort, we worked with Wooten and the company’s counsel to draft Asset Purchase Agreements for each store that addressed the terms and conditions of the sale, building more leverage into Wooten’s side of the sale process.

Matrix collected multiple offers from both strategic and individual buyers, and presented the offers with all of their proposed contract amendments to Wooten, so that they could evaluate all of the offers in context and select the combination of offers that maximized the value.

Wooten selected offers from WilcoHess for nine of the stores and offers from Sampson-Bladen for the remaining three stores; sale proceeds were in the range provided by Matrix prior to its engagement.