Private Equity Drives Growth at Service King
Carlyle and Blackstone Grow Collision Repair Company to 300 Locations
WASHINGTON, DC – If you are in need of collision repair services, there is a good chance you…
WASHINGTON, DC – If you are in need of collision repair services, there is a good chance you turn to a Service King Collision Repair Center. With more than 300 repair centers across the U.S., Service King is the leading national provider for auto body repair.
You might not know that Service King is a private equity-backed company, first owned by The Carlyle Group and then sold to Blackstone, with Carlyle maintaining a minority stake and partnership role.
As Service King CEO Chris Abraham describes their private equity ownership in our new video case study, “Private equity is more than just a bottom line play, and we’ve seen that now for the last four years. It’s about providing opportunity to our team. It’s about providing better compensation, and better benefits.”
His colleague, Service King President Jeff McFadden, also speaks highly of private equity. “It gave us the jet fuel for growth: the ability to take the next step,” he said. “Without private equity, we would have never been able to grow independently to the scale that we are today.”
Shary Moalemzadeh, Managing Director at Carlyle, explains how Service King was identified as a company poised for growth, and how his management team stepped in to help the company develop.
“We saw a family-run business with the ability to really expand that platform nationally; we took the business from one state to 20 states,” Moalemzadeh said. “We added an M&A function to help them identify, source, execute, and close acquisitions.”
After “realizing their five-year plan in two years,” Carlyle maintained a position in the company, and sold Service King to Blackstone.
“We really believed in the future of the business, and that’s why we partnered with Blackstone going forward,” said Moalemzadeh.
Peter Wallace, a Senior Managing Director at Blackstone, described his firm’s ownership goals with the company.
“They are a leader in a very fragmented industry,” said Wallace, “We are supporting Service King’s consolidation of the collision repair industry and are working with management to build the company into a national leader.”
Both the Carlyle and Blackstone teams have accelerated the growth of this company by introducing new functions, acquisitions, capital, technology, and management techniques to help Service King grow and succeed.
