Following a variety of news reports over the past few years highlighting the frustrations of shareholders in the MarineMax group, some of whom cited boardroom nepotism and a company not meeting its true potential, it seems that the board is ready to accept a deal with three major players still at the table.

From a superyacht perspective, MarineMax becomes interesting because of its ownership of IGY Marinas, Fraser Yachts and Northrop & Johnson, although the lion’s share of revenues comes from dealer showrooms for hundreds of small production boats across its US boat sales network.

The remaining buyers include Donerail, an activist investor from California, one of MarineMax’s largest and most vocal shareholders, who has been trying to take control of the company for some time. Blackstone and Safe Harbor is another obvious buyer, and has made clear that any strategic target is affordable. The concept of a vast marina network, service hubs and refit shipyards, combined with two major brokerage businesses and the smaller yacht sales networks, would create a highly dominant force in yachting without precedent. Finally, there is Centerbridge Partners, a major stakeholder in Texas-based Suntex Marinas, a further investment partner that has made the yachting space one of its playgrounds.

What will be interesting is what all this does to the cost of ownership and the service culture.

The deal is yet to be done and shareholders may in fact still reject the offers, but with a debt pile of almost $1.5Bn and some softening in the smaller-yacht sales market, it is likely to be very tempting for many of the shareholders, as the current share price is currently the same as it was a decade ago, at just over $35 dollars a share, down from $50-plus less than five years ago.

This scale of consolidation is always interesting to watch, as the Blackstone deal was perhaps the most dramatic shift we have ever seen in financial terms. It raised our sector’s profile across all investment groups, and with the most recent transaction by D-Marin, when CVC capital exited and sold the business to the French investor InfraVia for reportedly between 1Bn and 1.5Bn euros, the flow of capital seems to be increasing.

What will be interesting is what all this does to the cost of ownership and the service culture. We have recently seen price increases across the marina landscape, where the investors think there is ‘juice to be squeezed’ out of this luxury sector, otherwise why else would there be a scramble to invest?

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