See full version: Polaris Boat company announces plant closing, laying off 120 employees
The letter to Indiana workforce officials said Polaris Boats enjoyed a positive relationship with its workforce and the community. But Ott cited unprecedented challenges the business was facing “ in conjunction with the global coronavirus pandemic” as the reason for making “the difficult decision” to close.�
A letter to the Indiana Department of Workforce Development said Polaris Boats LLC planned to immediately lay off 10% of its workforce as it prepares to close its plant at 300 W. Chicago St. in Syracuse.�
All affected employees would be notified in writing of their specific last day, Steven Ott, vice president of human resources for Polaris Boats, said in the letter dated Monday.�
Additional layoffs will occur between now and mid-summer. The company expects to complete the shut down between July 1 and July 14.�
Some affected employees will have opportunities at Polaris Boat's two Elkhart locations where it will continue to produce its Bennington, Godfrey, and Hurricane boat brands.� more
Polaris Inc. on Monday announced what it calls a "strategic decision to focus its marine investments and growth efforts on its flagship boating brands." That plan entails ending production of Rinker, Striper and Larson FX boat brands at the Syracuse plant in June.
The brands Bennington acquired — Godfrey pontoon boats (which includes Aqua Patio, Sanpan and Sweetwater), Hurricane deckboats, Polar Kraft fishing boats and Rinker cruisers — are being held in a newly formed holding company and will be operated separately from Bennington.
“We are excited to bring together some of the strongest brands in the marine industry," Jacob Vogel, CEO at Bennington Marine, said in a statement. "And we want to assure dealers and their customers that it is business as usual. Production, servicing and marketing of these terrific brands will continue to remain separate and strong."
The company has been owned by private equity firms Silver Point Capital and Oaktree Capital for nearly a decade, Malone said — a long time by private equity standards. It was formed in 2005 when Godfrey Marine and the Rinker Boat Co. merged. [links]
The U.S. market for new powerboats is $8 billion, and pontoon boats are the largest and fastest growing segment of the industry with an 11% compound annual growth rate since 2010. There’s strong overlap between the different types of powersports with some 30% of Polaris’s existing customers owning a boat.
Elkhart, Indiana-based Boat Holdings makes deck boats and cruisers, in addition to pontoon boats, with more than 200 models under the Bennington, Godfrey, Hurricane and Rinker brands. Founded in 1997 by boating entrepreneur Steve Vogel, the company had $560 million in revenue last year, with Ebitda of $74 million. “We thought if we were going to get into boats, we wanted to get into it with a major player,” said Wine, 50, a former naval officer who became Polaris’s CEO in 2008 after stints at United Technologies, Danaher and Allied Signal.
“When Boat Holdings came up for sale, we looked at it. We were weighing it against Ducati. We decided to go down the Ducati path and that ran away. Boat Holdings was still available,” Wine said. The Vogels offered the deal to just a handful of companies, he said, and Polaris was their preferred choice. Over the past two months, as discussions heated up again, the two sides hammered out a deal. The structure of the deal will give Polaris a tax benefit of approximately $100 million, reducing the effective price of the deal. The price represents a multiple of 9 times Ebitda, a discount to both Polaris’s own valuation and to comparable publicly traded boat companies, according to CFO Speetzen. [links]
Godfrey, which also manufactures Hurricane deck boats and Godfrey pontoon boats, is part of Highwater Marine, the company formed by Bennington Marine after it acquired Nautic Global Group in October.
The new owners are acquiring the brand and certain assets and liabilities of Polar Kraft, which is located in Syracuse, Ind.
Bennington acquired the Nautic Global Group brands, which include Godfrey, Hurricane, Rinker, Sweetwater and others last year after an accelerated sales process that saw the private equity owners of NGG taking bids for the brands. [links]