Wanderlodge Gurus - The Member Funded Wanderlodge Forum

Nice find Morey

Hennessy is a blank check company. It was created by a few and funded by a group of investors and it went public in a late 2013 IPO even though they own nothing and produce nothing. Their sole purpose was to find a company to merge with. Once the merger finalizes, the publicly traded Hennessy goes away and in its place is a publicly traded Blue Bird. It's an alternative to private equity. In this case, a group of private investors take a privately held company public overnight! Do any of you feel like investing in Blue Bird? I'm pretty sure the Hennessy general partners are long gone with their 20% fees...

the Private investor thing didn't work out for the motor home division back when my neighbor bought it. When the Carson brothers picked up the motor home part of Bluebird sales were tanked for the entire industry. It might be that the motorhome part was not marketable because larger groups would have the resource to study that it was not possible to survive. You would think that Parliment would be able to keep the name alive or just together so someone could buy it and continue with the brand good will. Here is a link to an old java script slide presentation that will probably get lost with the new ownership
http://www.blue-bird.com/history.aspx#.VCbRiBY0-Gs

Hi Greg,

I think your neighbors paid something like $5M for it. We should have gathered up some investors, bought it and mothballed it pending recovery from the great crash of 2008. With such a paltry sum at stake, my guess is it was too easy for them to fold-up shop, auction off, and walk when times got hard. No staying power and little skin in the game.

Cerberus paid $165M for BB back in 2006. They split off Wanderlodge and they survived the crash, they also assumed all of BB's debt. The "IPO" gave them something like $255M cash with $235M of debt assumed by BB.

thanks Greg , I enjoyed the slides

Hi,
Perhaps a little tough on CCW.
The Bluebird Bankruptcy was one of the shortest in US history (36 hours) It was obviously prearranged restructuring with Cerberus spinning off Coachworks to CCW.
Then BB tried to stick CCW with the recall costs and more. CCW put a lot in , including legals. With the accidents , BB finally had to take responsibility. The axle mess with BB never really trying for the new axle promised and realization that the bones of the 450 were a problem, CCW pulled the plug before they pored in more. Redesign of the front structure to accept a higher capacity axle and then its design was no doubt thought to be prohibitive. Add in the recessional atmosphere.... In their bankruptcy, CCW sued BB for $5 million for non disclosure. That didn't go far as BB had the contract bullet proof .
New lawsuits would certainly hurt going public.
No stock for me . Maybe short!!

(09-27-2014 12:51)davidbrady Wrote: [ -> ]Hi Greg,

I think your neighbors paid something like $5M for it. We should have gathered up some investors, bought it and mothballed it pending recovery from the great crash of 2008. With such a paltry sum at stake, my guess is it was too easy for them to fold-up shop, auction off, and walk when times got hard. No staying power and little skin in the game.

Cerberus paid $165M for BB back in 2006. They split off Wanderlodge and they survived the crash, they also assumed all of BB's debt. The "IPO" gave them something like $255M cash with $235M of debt assumed by BB.

CCW was certainly swimming with the sharks and most likely out of their league when negotiating the purchase of Wanderlodge with Cerberus. I wonder if they knew they were purchasing the liabilities of the legacy M450's? Can you imagine buying any RV company and willfully assuming warranty claims? Those losses can be limitless given the junk that most manufacturers sell. I can only imagine the legal team required to safely make a purchase from Cerberus. The recent purchase of BB from Cerberus and the strange "blank check" company required to pull it off and recreate BB as a public company is a case in point. Why not follow the usual path of a public IPO? I agree, the M450 debacle and associated lawsuits loom large in the failure of CCW's Wanderlodge acquisition. In any case, CCW may have been poorly equipped to purchase and own Wandlerlodge and Cerberus may have found the perfect buyer!

Ccw had some bad luck after the purchase but things are quite active with making airport shuttle and the smog retrofits. I just hope someone picks up the history files and links like the one I posted. This may be a good purpose for a domain I have.