Interestingly, Spartan has lost money like mad on the emergency side of their business. Then all of a sudden they have a $100 million line of credit and buy their biggest purchaser of chassis.
My guess is once Smeal ran out of cash, Spartan had no choice but to buy them to keep selling a large enough quantity of chassis to be sustainable. How Smeal got to where they are would be an interesting story to learn.
Supposedly the REV Group folks were first in line to buy, I'd go so far as to bet that Spartan had to outbid them to keep selling a lot of chassis. The press release for the sale states that of Smeal's 2016 revenue of $100 million, $30 million of it was Spartan chassis. That's probably in the range of 150 chassis alone. Anyone think that Spartan is building any more than 250 chassis a year, 300 tops for emergency service use?
I'll be curious to see if Spartan somehow starts to turn a profit on their emergency products side.
My guess is once Smeal ran out of cash, Spartan had no choice but to buy them to keep selling a large enough quantity of chassis to be sustainable. How Smeal got to where they are would be an interesting story to learn.
Supposedly the REV Group folks were first in line to buy, I'd go so far as to bet that Spartan had to outbid them to keep selling a lot of chassis. The press release for the sale states that of Smeal's 2016 revenue of $100 million, $30 million of it was Spartan chassis. That's probably in the range of 150 chassis alone. Anyone think that Spartan is building any more than 250 chassis a year, 300 tops for emergency service use?
I'll be curious to see if Spartan somehow starts to turn a profit on their emergency products side.
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