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Ranger Aerospace Marks 20 Years of Private Equity Aviation Buyouts

March 31, 2017

GREENVILLE, SC, March 31, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Ranger Aerospace, a private equity consolidator and management holding company specializing in aerospace operations and aviation services deals since 1997, marked its twentieth anniversary since inception, during March 2017. Ranger has built three separate platform companies to over $100 Million revenues each thus far in its colorful 20 year history, and has managed as many as 4,250 personnel at 56 airports. Ranger adds value by bringing accomplished leaders to bear on operational improvements and accelerated growth. Ranger focuses heavily on operations, marketing, quality, and people, with a "Good to Great" incremental approach to business transformations. 

 

Ranger’s latest holdings are: ACL Airshop, which provides air cargo products and services to airlines clients at more than half of the world’s Top 50 cargo airports; and InTech Aerospace, which performs MRO and retrofit services on commercial airliner interiors. The pivotal investment in ACL Airshop won the Deal of the Year award for 2016 from M&A Advisor magazine, an international financial publication. In earlier aviation ventures, Ranger Aerospace won similar awards for Deal of the Year in 2009, and Deal of the Decade in 2011 (for the decade ending 2010). Ranger’s divestiture of Ranger International Services Group won 3 Deal of the Year awards in 2012 for the sale of that aerospace/defense technical services company to a major international engineering firm. 

 

This 20th anniversary commemorates Ranger's long history of excellence in the aerospace private equity field. Since its inception in March 1997 as a “kitchen table start-up,” Ranger’s previous large-scale multi-year and multi-acquisition successes have included ASIG, Keystone Helicopter, Skytanking GmbH, Composite Technology, Ranger Rotorcraft Group, Ranger International, the Keystone HeliPlex, and related ventures under Ranger’s quality-centered management style. Each large platform with a successful exit was sold to huge strategic buyers, who then kept growing the business. Ranger Aerospace stemmed from Ranger Partners Group, was first formed as a “C”-Corp, and later shifted to a Delaware “LLC” following a divestiture in 2001.

 

Steve Townes, Ranger Aerospace founder and CEO of Ranger Airshop Holdings, referring to the large new Air Cargo platform, said: "We intend to at least double ACL Airshop’s service network in the next five years on behalf of its many airlines clients.”  Townes added: “We will do this steadily like we have before, pacing ourselves carefully through strategic investments and organic growth, entering new lines of technical capacity, fostering deep and continuous operational improvements, expanding geographically, and possibly acquiring complementary companies. The flywheel is already accelerating.”

 

Ranger Aerospace has been the management stewardship team for over $400 Million in various buying, selling, and investing transactions over the past two decades. Investment returns in each of Ranger’s successful large-scale divestitures have been superior for the sector, with “IRR” on its strongest exit slightly over 60%, plus commensurate cash-on-cash multiples. Townes said: “Our excellent results, value creation, and sustained performance are due to outstanding teams of people. We manage for Quality—Safety—FAA Compliance, and we have always strived to be a positive, principled employer for motivated aviation professionals with the Right Stuff. Our quality awards and workforce expansions are as important to us as financial kudos, because it is those fundamentals that create lasting and growing enterprises.” Ranger has created at least two thousand new jobs over the past twenty years by aggressively expanding the large enterprises it has owned. 

 

For Editors:

Ranger Aerospace is an aviation-specialized holding company that partners with institutional co-investors to acquire, grow, and positively transform aerospace services companies. Its founder, Steve Townes, an engineering graduate of West Point, has been Ranger’s CEO for 20 years. He is also Chairman of a statewide public/private partnership called "South Carolina Aerospace.”  Ranger’s history also includes a successful “Junk Bond” offering in its early years, a tumultuous takeover attempt of a publicly traded medium-sized aerospace company, and deliberately hiring veterans as an organizational preference when and where feasible.  Ranger’s name, logo, distinctive lightning-bolt crest, and tag-line are trademarked worldwide for exclusive usage in the aerospace/aviation sectors. 

 

For more information, visit www.rangeraerospace.com, www.aclairshop.com, www.intechaero.com, and www.scaerospace.com