Story Distributing Company

The Trigger:

• The Client sought retirement from the industry and inquired as to the Company’s valuation and timing for a strategic sale process, while concerned about the future tax treatment of a sale if the process were deferred several years.

The Project:

• Corner Capital performed a Fair Market Valuation for Story Distributing and outlined a structured sale process that should yield optimal value to the family, while considering their desire to retain long term rental income in a rapidly appreciating real estate market.
• Corner Capital sourced proposals from several national & international strategic and private-equity sponsored convenience retailer & wholesale fuels companies. Through extensive negotiations and thorough vetting of a Letter of Intent, Parkland Fuels was chosen as the winning bidder in the structured sale.
• Upon executing the Letter of Intent with Parkland, Story Distributing entered an extensive diligence process with KPMG leading a quality of earnings for Parkland. Corner Capital led the diligence responses & business negotiations that led to signing of a favorable asset purchase agreement between Story Distributing & Parkland.

The Solution:

• Corner Capital worked closely with its Client across all facets of the transaction process from diligence, negotiating the contractual agreements with Parkland, to closing.
• The Client sought to retain the fee real estate at a number of the convenience stores and bulk plant facilities and lease the properties under a long-term master lease agreement with Parkland as the tenant operator. Corner Capital structured the purchase price and lease to meet the desires of the Client to seek balancing liquidity in optimizing after-tax net proceeds from the sale with stable current income & tax efficient estate planning post-Closing.

The Result:

• The Company’s operations and business assets were successfully marketed and sold to a single buyer. Parkland USA (TSX: PKI) closed on the transaction on February 1, 2021.