Early indicators signal a bustling buy-sell market this year as individual dealers and groups contemplate selling to exit an increasingly complex and uncertain retail world — or buying more stores to gain scale to better compete in that evolving retail landscape.
“Since the end of December, we have been getting nonstop calls — buyers and sellers, but mostly sellers,” said buy-sell adviser Sheldon Sandler, partner in Bel Air Partners in Hopewell, N.J. “Private equity interest has died down, so they’re not the buyers. It’s the larger dealer groups, public and private.”
Erin Kerrigan, managing director of buy-sell advisory Kerrigan Advisors in Irvine, Calif., predicts the public groups will be “much more active” in 2018. “Some of them will be making big bets on major groups and maybe even beyond our borders.”
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Kerrigan Advisors is the leading sell-side advisor and thought partner to auto dealers nationwide. Since its founding in 2014, the firm has led the industry with the sale of over 285 dealerships generating more than $9 billion in client proceeds, including two of the largest transactions in auto retail history – the sale of Jim Koons Automotive Companies to Asbury Automotive Group and Leith Automotive to Holman. The firm advises the industry’s leading dealership groups, enhancing value through the lifecycle of growing, operating and, when the time is right, selling their businesses. Led by a team of veteran industry experts with backgrounds in investment banking, private equity, accounting, finance and real estate, Kerrigan Advisors is the only firm in auto retail exclusively dedicated to sell-side advisory, providing its clients the assurance of a conflict-free approach.
Kerrigan Advisors monitors conditions in the buy/sell market and publishes an in-depth analysis each quarter in The Blue Sky Report®, the industry authority on dealership buy/sell market trends and valuations and includes Kerrigan Advisors’ signature blue sky charts, multiples and analysis for each franchise in the luxury and non-luxury segments. To download a preview of the report, click here. The firm also releases The Kerrigan Index™ comprised of the seven publicly traded auto retail companies with operations focused on the US market. The Kerrigan Auto Retail Index is designed to track dealership valuation trends, while also providing key insights into factors influencing auto retail. To access The Kerrigan Index™, click here. To read the 2024 Kerrigan Dealer Survey, click here. To read the 2024 Kerrigan OEM Survey, click here. Kerrigan Advisors also is the co-author of NADA’s Guide to Buying and Selling a Dealership.
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