March 23, 2021 – Southlake, TX – Prophet Equity (“Prophet”), a Southlake, TX-based private equity firm, completed the sale of its portfolio company, Ace Asphalt of Arizona, Inc., (“Ace” or the “Company”) to Sunland Asphalt & Construction, LLC, a portfolio company of Huron Capital.
In December 2010, Prophet acquired Ace from Tim Drexler, whose father founded the business in 1966. The Company which is headquartered in Phoenix, AZ has been able to grow both revenue and EBITDA through deploying their best-in-class operational approach into core and expansion markets. Ace’s unique set of strategic capabilities allowed the Company to expand its core markets revenue by ~41% and Greenfield four new growth markets. In recent years, Ace has amplified its focus on recurring maintenance by growing its public works maintenance business and expanding its recurring services offerings to ~70% of total revenue.
“Ace’s transformation is a testament to the hard work and determination of the management team and employees,” said David Rex, General Counsel at Prophet Equity “Because of their commitment and partnership Ace is ideally positioned to capitalize on enormous opportunities in the US Southwest.”
Michael Hirschfeld, Principal at Prophet Equity commented, “While Ace has always been a very strategic business, it has been incredible to work alongside Scott Phillips and the entire senior leadership team to drive an industry leading culture and strong bottom line performance, particularly over the past three years. Through leveraging our collective strengths the business and leadership team have driven EBITDA up 3.57x or ~257%.
“The Prophet Equity team has been the ideal partner for Ace and the leadership team,” said Scott Phillips. “We are thankful for the collaborative assistance Prophet Equity has provided to enable us to create such a unique business.”
“Ace is another example of our unique ability to dramatically improve performance through our Fortune 500 and private equity proven strategic and operational implementation toolkit and hands on approach,” added Ross Gatlin, Prophet’s Managing Partner. “Our uniquely collaborative approach, combined with the deployment of our Holistic Value Creation™ (HVC™) process is a testament to the opportunity that can be unlocked in businesses like Ace. We thank the exceptionally experienced management team at Ace for their commitment and dedication to maximizing value.”
TM Capital served as financial advisor and Jackson Walker as legal counsel to Ace and Prophet Equity.