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TWST: What is Interline Brands?
Mr. Sanford: Interline Brands is a direct marketer and value-added distributor
of maintenance repair and operations products (MRO products). We are in an
industry that's very fragmented and the roots of the company are in the
distribution of maintenance products to the multi-family housing industry.
The company started in Camden, New Jersey, in 1978 as a hardware distributor and
evolved into a distributor focused on the needs of the maintenance professionals
that manage and maintain apartment properties. In the mid-1990s, the company
went public and started a national expansion program through acquisitions. By
1998, the company had achieved significant market share in the multi-family
housing market. My partner, Mike Grebe, who is our CEO, and I were recruited
from other public industrial distributors in 1998 and 1999 to help reposition
the company to grow into other markets. In 1999, we acquired a company called
J.A. Sexauer, which is also a distributor of maintenance products but to
facilities other than apartment buildings - mainly the much larger institutional
facilities market which includes schools, hospitals, hotels, universities, and
prisons.
In 2000, it was decided that the company could expand more aggressively as a
private company, so capital was raised from private equity investors and the
company went private in May 2000. We then acquired Barnett, which was also a
public company and a distributor of the same types of items, but primarily to
professional contractors that repair and remodel residential housing.
So by the end of 2001, we had gone from a single-market focused business with
about $200 million in revenues to a multi-brand, multi-market focused company
with approximately $600 million in revenues and a much larger addressable
market.
Over the next two years, we worked on consolidating our business onto a common
operating platform. In 2003, we acquired a catalog distributor that sells
electrical and lighting products to the residential contractor base that we were
already selling to.
In December 2004, we went public on the New York Stock Exchange, trading as IBI.
Since then, we have invested heavily in organic growth initiatives, and have
grown significantly. We have made two acquisitions since we went public. The
first was in July 2005. We acquired Copperfield, which is a distributor of
maintenance products to chimney and HVAC professionals. Then in July 2006, we
acquired AmSan, which is a national distributor of janitorial and sanitary
products. Combined with our existing business, our revenue run rate is roughly
$1.2 billion, which is up from $200 million when we started this process back in
1998.
Tickers included in this excerpt: IBI
For more information call (212) 952 7433. The
Wall Street Transcript does not endorse any of the comments made by interviewees, and does
not make stock recommendations.
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