Window manufacturing and installation company NewSouth Window Solutions, a member of the 2018 Big50 class, reached a deal to be bought by PGT Innovations of Sarasota County, Fla., for $92 million, the Tampa Bay Times reports. Founded in 2010, NewSouth makes, sells, and installs energy-efficient windows and doors, including impact-resistant residential products.
NewSouth has 375 employees statewide, nearly 200 of them in Hillsborough County, and seven factory showrooms around Florida, an eighth in Charleston, S.C., and a ninth getting ready to open in the first quarter of next year in the Pensacola-Mobile, Ala. market. Since 2015, its net sales have grown at a 29% compounded annual rate and are expected to be $82 million to $85 million this year.
The company was founded by Dan and Deb Ochstein and Earl and Amy Rahn. Dan and Earl had been employees and equity partners at Champion Window Manufacturing of Cincinnati and both had agreements to stay at Champion for three years following its purchase in 2007. “It has been a wonderful ride,” said Earl Rahn, the company president. Still, after eight years of rapid growth he began interviewing mergers and acquisition specialists about a year ago.
“We felt that we had accomplished quite a bit in Florida, and we wanted to grow and expand beyond Florida, but we needed assistance doing that, both operationally and financially,” Ochstein said. Sixty or 70 potential partners got narrowed down to nine, then to three, then to PGT, a publicly traded company based in Venice.
PGT expects NewSouth to help extend its reach into northern Florida as well as Texas, Louisiana, Georgia and the Carolinas, PGT president and chief executive officer Jeff Jackson said in a call for investors and analysts. PGT also expects the acquisition to help it expand into direct-to-consumer sales without overlapping into the business of its existing network of authorized dealers.
