Mitiska and Emiel Lathouwers, who hold equal shares in AS Lathouwers, the Belgian holding company above AS Adventure, Cotswold and Bever Zwerfsport, have confirmed a deal to sell their stakes to Lion Capital, a London-based investment fund. Sealed at a price of €215 million, the sale of the fast-moving outdoor group is meant to speed up its expansion in several other European countries and perhaps other sports categories.
Lathouwers founded AS Adventure, Belgium’s leading outdoor retailer, in 1995. He has now sold all of the family’s shares in the business but he has decided to reinvest part of the proceeds in the new holding company that is formally acquiring AS Lathouwers. The size of his stake in the new company could not be determined. As the driving force behind the remarkable rise of AS Adventure, he has pledged to remain at the helm for at least two more years.
Mitiska, a Belgian investment company, has also divested its own stake in AS Lathouwers, but with an option to buy up to 25 percent of the new holding company and for a maximum price of €36 million, within a period of three months after the conclusion of the sale. Both sellers anticipate that the transaction will be rounded off in February 2008.
Mitiska stepped into AS Adventure back in 1998, when it still consisted of just three stores in Antwerp with sales of €15 million. The sale of its stake in AS Adventure will yield a capital gain of about €31 million compared with the intrinsic value of the shareholding as evaluated at June 30, 2007. Late last month Mitiska already announced an agreement to sell its stake in Brantano, Belgium’s leading shoe retailer, to the Macintosh Retail Group in the Netherlands – which was unanimously approved by Macintosh shareholders at their general meeting on Nov. 15.
The sale of AS Adventure comes just a few weeks after the chain acquired its counterpart in the Netherlands, Bever Zwerfsport. The deal formed a European-scale retailer with combined sales of roughly €200 million for 2006, spread between 21 stores that generated sales of €77.5 million in Belgium; 23 stores operating in the UK under the Costwold banner with sales of £33.7 million; and another 29 stores run by Bever Zwerfsport in the Netherlands reaping sales of about €45.8 million.
Lion Capital is an investment fund specialized in consumer goods, with holdings in retail activities such as Jimmy Choo, La Senza and Hema, a Dutch retailer of household appliances. Including the acquisition of net debt, Lion Capital is forking out €263 million to acquire the outdoor group.
Lathouwers indicates that the sale is meant to provide the Belgian outdoor group with resources to expand even further across Europe. The company is particularly interested in France, England and several countries in central Europe, from Poland to Hungary and the Czech Republic.
At the same time, AS Adventure continues to grow its existing business, with seven store openings slated for Cotswold in 2008, three for AS Adventure in Belgium and one for Bever Zwerfsport in the Netherlands. Furthermore, the company will try out a new concept, called AS Adventure Snow & Bike, on a surface of 950 square meters in Schoten, near Antwerp, in March.
Another addition to the business is the opening of mono-brand stores. AS Adventure already runs three of them for The North Face in Belgium, one in England and one in the Netherlands, while another three are planned in the Benelux in the short term. Furthermore, AS Adventure has obtained exclusive rights to open Nike stores in Belgium, the first of which was opened last month on 540 sqm. on the Meir, Antwerp’s leading shopping street. Between two and four more Nike stores should be inaugurated in Belgium next year, and the licensee estimates that there is scope for up to 15 such stores in the country.
