Matrix Capital Markets Group Inc. has successful closed on the sale of select retail assets of Lehigh Gas Corp., a petroleum marketer and convenience store operator in the Northeast.
The assets, located in New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, include both company-operated and dealer-operated stores.
These sales are part of Lehigh’s ongoing efforts to rationalize its existing assets as part of its overall plan to continue growth through opportunistic acquisitions.
Matrix executed a structured and customized marketing process for the assets, which yielded multiple competitive offers that provided Lehigh Gas with an array of options to maximize the value of the assets. In all, 40 stores are being sold. Twenty-five of the stores were purchased by Sunoco on Dec. 22, three stores were sold to individual dealers, and closings on the remaining 12 stores are planned to occur over the next few weeks.
“I appreciate Matrix’s strategic review of our business and management of the sale process, which has helped us achieve greater enterprise value,” said Joe Topper, CEO of Lehigh Gas.
“We were honored to be selected by Lehigh Gas to handle these transactions,” said Tom Kelso, managing director and head of the energy and Multi-Site Retail Group at Matrix, who managed the transaction. “We enjoyed working with Joe Topper, Lehigh’s CEO, Dave Hrinak, Lehigh’s president, and their management team in helping to achieve Lehigh’s goal of monetizing assets in order to reinvest the capital and grow in their core markets.”
Matt Murphy, senior associate with Matrix, who co-managed the transaction added, “The quality and positioning of Lehigh’s assets combined with the exceptional way these stores were managed created a very attractive opportunity and were the driving factors in achieving an extremely successful result.”