TaylorMade Golf sold for $425 million to KPS Capital Partners LP

[mvmac]

http://www.golf.com/equipment/2017/05/10/taylormade-golf-sold-425-million-kps-capital-partners-lp

Quote

After months of shopping its golf brands, Adidas has sold TaylorMade, Adams Golf and Ashworth Golf to KPS Capital Partners LP for $425 million.

The sports apparel and equipment brand announced the sale Wednesday; the deal is expected to be completed in late 2017. KPS Capital is a private equity firm based in New York City. It manages approximately $5.3 billion in assets across a variety of industries. 

"TaylorMade is a leading global golf brand with an exceptionally strong market position," Kasper Rorstead, CEO of adidas AG, said in a press release. "We would like to thank all TaylorMade employees for their many contributions to our company and wish them all the best for a successful future under their new ownership. At the same time, we welcome all adidas Golf employees who will be integrated into our adidas Heartbeat Sports Business Unit."

Said David Shapiro, a managing partner of KPS, "TaylorMade is one of the preeminent golf equipment brands worldwide, with leading-edge products that consistently provide consumers a distinct performance advantage over the competition. ... The combination of this iconic brand and KPS' track record of working constructively with talented management teams to make businesses better will provide the ideal foundation for TaylorMade's future growth."

The move comes just one day after TaylorMade, which has been owned by Adidas since 1997, announced an endorsement deal with world No. 2 Rory McIlroy. Among the other stars on TaylorMade's Tour roster are Tiger Woods, Sergio Garcia, Jason Day, Dustin Johnson and Justin Rose. It remains to be seen how the Tour staff will be handled under the new ownership.

The future of the Adams and Ashworth brands is also unknown.    

 

[JGus]

Will be interesting how this impacts signed players, if at all.  I don't know the numbers, but i'm curious how much they payout in endorsements compared to how much they were sold for. And if that cost impacted the sale price, either up or down.

[dennyjones]

You'd have to believe this was in the works well before signing Rory and both parties thought it was a good investment.   He must have known also about the sale before signing with TaylorMade.

[mvmac]

Crazy thing is in 2013 TM hit 1.7 Billion in sales. The racing stripes and Dick's downsizing (lol) really hit them hard. And obviously they overproduced and confused the marketplace.

It'll be interesting to see how much changes with the structure and management of TM. Their tour budget is so huge and it just got bigger with Rory. Does that change? Is their focus still on maintaining the #1 driver status? Will they release new products every 18 months instead of every 6-12 months?

I fairly certain KPS will try to sell off Adams and Ashworth.

[WUTiger]

As a side note, Ping has bought up most of Nike's golf-equipment related patents.

Looks like big golf club manufacturers want to minimize outsiders trying to buy way into industry.