Madison Dearborn Partners has partnered with Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) to acquire publicly traded IPL Plastics at an enterprise value of $736 million.
IPL Plastics (TSX: IPLP) is a maker of packaging used in the food, consumer, agricultural, logistics and environmental end-markets.
The company’s products include large format packaging (pails, containers, crates, and wheeled bins); consumer packaging (injection-molded containers and lids); and returnable packaging (bulk containers, and reusable and collapsible containers). IPL was founded in 1939 and is based in Montreal, Canada with additional offices in Dublin, Ireland.
In 2019, IPL had revenues of $605 million, gross profit of $119 million (a 19.7% GPM), and EBITDA of $83 million (a 13.7% EBITDA margin). This yields an EBITDA valuation multiple of 8.9x.
IPL was founded in 1939 and went public on the Montreal Stock Exchange in 1985. The company was taken private by Novacap and Fonds de solidarité FTQ in 2010, and the two investors exited in 2015 through a sale of a majority interest in IPL to One51, an Ireland-based maker of plastic containers. The combined companies went public on the Toronto Stock exchange in 2018.
Madison Dearborn invests in privately held or publicly traded companies in the following sectors: basic industries; business and government software and services; financial and transaction services; health care; and telecom, media, and technology services. In August 2016, the firm closed its seventh buyout fund at $4.4 billion. Madison Dearborn was founded in 1992 and is based in Chicago.
Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec is an institutional investor that manages funds primarily for public and para-public pension and insurance plans. As of December 2019, it held C$340 billion in net assets.
Committed financing for this transaction has been provided by Bank of America, BMO Capital Markets, Barclays, and Deutsche Bank. BMO Capital Markets is the financial advisor to the IPL Plastics and Evercore is advising Madison Dearborn.
Private Equity Professional | July 31, 2020
