“The repositioning of capital within our market area is an important part of our strategy to acquire new sites, renovate existing sites, and own and operate sites consistent with our brand identity,” says Cumberland Farms CEO.
Framingham, Mass.-based Cumberland Farms Inc. has divested 29 stores to multiple buyers, including regional jobbers, individual store buyers, and individual store operators, Matrix Capital Markets Group Inc. announced Wednesday.
Closings have occurred on 23 of the stores and the remaining six stores under contract should be closing over the next month. All of the locations were owned by Cumberland Farms and were operated by independent operators. Cumberland also supplied fuel to 28 of the stores.
The purpose of the sale was to allow Cumberland to redeploy capital to its remaining and new-to-industry company operated retail units, comprised of over 500 high volume convenience stores located in highly populated areas across 10 states in the Northeast and Florida. For more than 70 years, Cumberland has been a convenience store operator in these markets.
“It was a pleasure to work with the professionals at Matrix on these transactions,” said Joe Petrowski, CEO of the Cumberland Gulf Group of Companies. “The repositioning of capital within our market area is an important part of our strategy to acquire new sites, renovate existing sites, and own and operate sites consistent with our brand identity.”
Matrix provided merger and acquisition advisory services to Cumberland, which included valuation advisory, asset marketing through a customized, structured sale process and negotiation of the transactions.
The transactions were managed by Tom Kelso, managing director and head of the Matrix Energy and Multi-Site Retail Group; Cedric Fortemps, senior vice president; Vance Saunders, associate; and Sean Dooley, senior analyst.
“We are extremely pleased to have advised Cumberland on the monetization of a significant amount of non-core assets,” Kelso said. “We know that the proceeds derived from these transactions will be redeployed in a manner that provides a higher return on capital than they would have generated from continuing to own these assets. It was a pleasure working with the entire Cumberland team and we appreciate them engaging Matrix to maximize the value of these stores.”