BETHLEHEM, Pa. -- Lehigh Gas Corp., a petroleum marketer and convenience store operator in the Northeast, has closed on the sale of select retail assets located in New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. In all, 40 stores will be sold.
Sunoco purchased 25 of the stores on December 22. Three stores were sold to individual dealers, and closings on the remaining12 stores will occur over the next few weeks.
The sites include both company-operated and dealer-operated stores.
Richmond, Va.-based Matrix Capital Markets Group Inc. executed a structured and customized marketing process for the assets, which yielded multiple competitive offers that provided Lehigh Gas with an array of options to maximize the value of the assets.
Lehigh's goal was "monetizing assets in order to reinvest the capital and grow in their core markets," said Tom Kelso, managing director and head of the Energy & Multi-Site Retail Group at Matrix, who managed the transaction.
"The other buyers are single-store buyers, and they have requested that their names not be mentioned. All of the purchasers were, however, existing Lehigh dealers, and they are purchasing their own stores," he told CSP Daily News.
Matt Murphy, senior associate with Matrix, who co-managed the transaction, added, "The quality and positioning of Lehigh's assets combined with the exceptional way these stores were managed created a very attractive opportunity and were the driving factors in achieving an extremely successful result."
Matrix's Energy & Multi-Site Retail Group provides transactional advisory services to companies in the downstream energy and multi-site retail sectors including convenience store chains, petroleum marketers, fuels distributors, retail propane distributors, heating oil distributors, lubes retailers and distributors, terminal operators, fuels transportation companies, hospitality companies and other specialty retail chains. Matrix Capital Markets Group is a leading middle-market investment bank providing merger and acquisition and financial advisory services, including sales and divestitures, staged liquidity transactions, management buyouts and debt and equity placements.
As of December 10, 2010, the Bethlehem, Pa.-based company had about 75 corporate-owned locations, and up to 300 dealer sites. Most of its corporate-owned c-stores are branded On the Run with Mobil fuel. Lehigh's other brands are ampm, BP and Exxon stations, according to CSPedia.net.
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