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Posted on 04/06/2007 5:02:18 PM PDT by neverdem
Remington Arms Co., the N.C. gunmaker that has equipped U.S. soldiers for 150 years, agreed to be acquired by a New York equity firm Cerberus Capital Management LP for $118 million.
The company produced its first profit in three years in 2006 after struggling with rising materials costs and increased competition from Smith & Wesson Holding Corp., maker of the .44 Magnum popularized in the "Dirty Harry" movies.
Cerberus is entering the $2.1 billion U.S. firearms industry, whose sales grew an annual average of 28 percent from 1998 to 2005, according to the U.S. Treasury Department. Remington is the country's largest and oldest maker of rifles and shotguns.
Remington was sold by other New York-based private-equity firms Bruckmann, Rosser, Sherrill & Co. and Clayton Dubilier & Rice Co., according to a company statement Thursday. The company is based in Madison, 25 miles north of Greensboro.
Remington was founded in 1816 by Eliphalet Remington II, who built his flintlock rifle in Ilion Gulch, N.Y., after placing second in a shooting match and attracting the attention of other contestants. The company was rescued by the U.S. government after Russian revolutionaries defaulted on a contract in 1918 and benefited from its purchase during the Great Depression by DuPont Co., which made improvements to gun powder.
Cai Von Rumohr, a Boston-based analyst at Cowen & Co., said Remington may be able to gain market share after U.S. Repeating Arms Co., which licenses the Winchester brand, discontinued three models and closed a factory in New Haven, Conn., where the rifles and shotguns were made for a century and a half.
The Remington transaction includes $252 million of debt. Cerberus spokeswoman JJ Rissi declined to comment on the deal's financial breakdown.
Remington, led by Chief Executive Officer Thomas Millner, stopped making handguns in the 1990s. Stricter federal and state laws governing the sale of pistols prompted gun manufacturers to narrow their focus on shotguns and rifles used for hunting and target shooting. The company's guns include the $812 700 BDL Custom Deluxe and $996 11-87 SPS Super Magnum.
In December, Smith & Wesson agreed to buy Thompson/Center Arms Inc. for $102 million to enter the hunting-rifle market. Springfield, Mass.-based Smith & Wesson, whose revenue is about half that of Remington, is known for its revolvers and pistols.
Last year, Remington posted net income of $300,000 after three years of losses. Sales rose 8.7 percent to $446 million. Smith & Wesson last month said it anticipates earning $12 million on $225 million of sales in fiscal 2007. The company had 2,150 employees at the end of February.
Clayton Dubilier bought Remington's assets from DuPont in 1993 for $300 million. The Wilmington, Del.-based chemical company purchased a 60 percent stake in the gunmaker in 1933 and acquired the remaining shares in 1980. During its 191-year history, Remington branched out to produce typewriters, sewing machines and cash registers, businesses it later divested.
Remington expects to complete the transaction by June 28.
Cheaper than dirt has it.
http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=22+high+power+ammo&hl=en&um=1&sa=X&oi=froogle&ct=title
Hey, thanks! Now...where’d I put my billfold?
Yes, more people use Google than buy Remingtons. Google is ‘free’ *if* you buy the infrastructure elements and pay the facetime to see their ads and don’t mind their tracking your every search to your Internet address and setting cookies...
If less hindered politically, Remingtons and other firearms would be cheaper to manufacture and deliver to law-abiding citizens and would result in a reduction in crime.
My crucial bigger point was that we have so many restrictions in place on the firearms industry and fewer who support the Second Amendment—and we must be alert that control of the former does not go cheaply to those like $oro$ who also seek to end the latter.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
They don’t make a rifle that’s competitive with Remington unless it might be some blackpowder inlines.
Didn’t Smith just buy Thompson Center this year? How did a less than twelve month purchase threaten Remington? I think the author simply doesn’t know another gun manufacturer or they would have mentioned Thompson Center.
What impresses me about TC is that they sold for 90% of what Remington sold for. I guess turning a nice profit makes a difference!
I have an old Thompson/Center muzzleloader Renegade. Haven’t fired it in years, and it needs a serious cleaning and oiling, but that sucker is accurate enough to turn a buck into a doe in .50 caliber style. ;^)
Yep.
I never wanted one because I thought they were not a good rifle or a good pistol. Sorta a poor inbetween. That’s just my opinion. I think if the ammo was cheaper it could have been a great plinker and fun gun. I don’t think the ammo was ever cheap. Some third world country should have adopted it so we could have bought their surplus ammo.
Now, I can’t wait. It’s not the rifle but it’s the history behind it.
Inland or whatever is available.
I like!!
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Lol, she looks like she’s under a bridge or an overpass! Flying low..
LOL!
The Titanic!
??? WHAT are the large pillars, lol, it looks like an underpass with a train or cars whizzing by!Very funny!
The key phrase is on paper. The YouTube guys were able to sell to Google for $1.65 billion, because it was a stock swap; to Google, it was found money, and to the YouTube guys, they could negotiate the price up enough that their whole families would be set for life if the share price deflates and they only end up getting a tenth.
The consensus was that the AOL/Time Warner merger was a disaster, and it was -- for TW shareholders. For AOL shareholders, their share price plummeted, but not before they used their pretend money to buy something of real, measurable and lasting value. Time, SI, and HBO have a hefty subscriber base. Warner Music has a strong current roster and a huge back catalog. Warner Bros. brought, among many other things, the reliably profitable Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter franchises.
TW got hosed. The clueless old-media types gave up a piece of something real for a piece of the shrinking dial-up online-sevice market -- AOL was never really an ISP -- and then the two companies combined clueless management, with predictable results.
With S&W buying Thompson and now Remington being bought out by a company that also wants to acquire other firearms manufacturers I have to remember the old saying about ‘all the eggs in one basket.’
What happens if all our gun makers are controlled by one big foreign bank that suddenly decides to build widgets instead? There may be nothing I can do it but I’m just paranoid enough to wonder what the downside of all this will be.
4 huge smokestacks spewing smoke!
I did not brighten or darken it
Looks good on my TV monitor
Smokestacks, ok I can see that now. It is already very dark, maybe you see it lighter than I do.
You’d think they would have had the courtesy to hit an iceberg during the daytime so we could see it better!
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