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Auto hauler Proficient takes home $200M from IPO

May 13, 2024

The company, formed last summer and to be led by a former Saia CEO, plans to buy five regional players.

A start-up company’s plan to consolidate part of the autohauler sector last week moved forward with an initial public offering that raised $200 million for its backers.

Proficient Auto Logistics Inc., which is based in Jacksonville, sold more than 14.3 million shares to investors at $15 apiece on May 9. After discounts and commissions for the company’s investment banks, founders Ross Berner and Mark McKinney and their team took home $200 million from the IPO. (Proficient shares, which are now trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol PAL, ended last week right at their $15 IPO price.)

Those proceeds could grow by another $30 million if Proficient’s investment banks—Raymond James, Stifel Nicolaus, and William Blair—pick up their option to buy another 2.15 million shares on behalf of investors.

Proficient was formed last year and plans to pay a total of $180 million for five regional auto haulers with combined 2023 revenues of $415 million and pro forma net income of $9.1 million. The five firms, which combined use about 1,130 vehicles and trailers and employ roughly 650 people, have grown at an average of 15% annually since 2019 despite U.S. auto sales sliding during the Covid-19 pandemic.

In the prospectus for their IPO, Proficient’s leaders cited transportation equipment shortages, leaner supply chains, and pressure on smaller firms as tailwinds for the businesses they’re about to buy.

Taking an active part in the IPO last week was Richard O’Dell, who was CEO of Saia Inc. (No. 19 on the 2024 FleetOwner 500 list of top for-hire carriers) from late 2006 until four years ago. O’Dell is preparing to take the CEO seat at Proficient and put his money where his mouth is: He agreed to buy 200,000 shares of Proficient at the $15 price.

Combined with more than 400,000 restricted shares he will receive as part of taking Proficient’s helm, O’Dell will own nearly 3% of the company once the offering closes. Berner and McKinney, who both have held senior roles at fellow auto hauler United Road Services Inc., will each own about 5% of Proficient.

About the Author

Geert De Lombaerde | Senior Editor

A native of Belgium, Geert De Lombaerde has more than two decades of experience in business journalism. Since 2021, he has written about markets and economic trends for Endeavor Business Media publications FleetOwner, Healthcare Innovation, IndustryWeek, Oil & Gas Journal, and T&D World.

With a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri, he began his reporting career at the Business Courier in Cincinnati. He later was managing editor and editor of the Nashville Business Journal. Most recently, he oversaw the online and print products of the Nashville Post and reported primarily on Middle Tennessee’s finance sector and many of its publicly traded companies.