NY, Canada buyers invest $150M+ in Pilot Freight
Richard Phillips Jr. to stay on as CEO
ATL Partners (that stands for Aerospace, Transportation and Logistics), of New York, and British Columbia Investment Management Corp., which invests for government pension and insurance plans in western Canada, have together bought a controlling share of Pilot Freight Services, a private air freight logistics, package forwarding and delivery company based in Lima, Pa.
Pilot employs more than 250. The company says its annual sales total $585 million. Pilot arranges shipments and deliveries, for clients including the U.S. Government, in North America and Western Europe.
Members of the Phillips family "will maintain a significant equity stake, and Richard G. Phillips will remain as Chief Executive Officer," Pilot said in this statement. Phillips' father, Richard "Bear" Phillips, a Philadelphia labor-union lawyer, helped refinance the company in 1993 and became Pilot's chairman. He died in 2013.
Pilot and the buyers didn't disclose the sale price. ATL says it invests, with partners, at least $150 million in the companies it targets. The company's sales and its annual growth reports imply a price in the hundreds of millions.
ATL borrowed $750 million last month and said at the time that it would use the money to buy airplanes for its other investment, Sky Leasing, which has offices in Ireland and San Francisco.
"ATL has been an admirer of Pilot's successes for some time and we are excited to be partnering with Mr. Phillips and the Pilot team," said Frank Nash, Chief Executive Officer of ATL, in a statement.
BCIMC private-equity chief Jim Pittman said his firm "is a long-term investor" that invests in firms like Pilot in hopes of collecting profits to fund its government-agency clients.