Dynamex Accepts Bigger Buyout Offer as Greenbriar Outbids ‘Excluded Party’

By Dan Leone, Staff Reporter

This story appears in the Dec. 6 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.

Greenbriar Equity Group raised its offer to buy out parcel courier Dynamex to $24 a share from $21.50 a share after an unidentified investor topped Greenbriar’s original offer and nearly derailed the private equity fund’s takeover effort.

Dynamex said in a Nov. 30 statement that it had accepted Greenbriar’s new offer. The

Rye, N.Y., investment group floated that offer after Dynamex announced ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday that another investor had offered $23.50 a share to take the Dallas-based carrier private.

The investor that forced Greenbriar to sweeten the pot for Dynamex shareholders was an “excluded party” from earlier merger talks, according to a statement issued by Dynamex on Nov. 23. A Dynamex spokeswoman on Nov. 30 declined to identify the “excluded party.”

A spokeswoman for Greenbriar did not respond to a request for comment from Transport Topics.

Under the terms of Dynamex’s original agreement with Greenbriar, Dynamex was required, after receiving the offer from the unidentified investor, to return to the table and negotiate with Greenbriar for four business days.

Dynamex broke news of the improved Greenbriar offer on the final day of the four-day negotiating period.

In negotiating the new agreement, Dynamex and Greenbriar also amended the terms of their merger to account for the possibility of other unsolicited buyout offers from other investors.

The cancellation fee that Dynamex would have to pay to back out of its new deal with Greenbriar was increased to $7.7 million from $6.3 million, the carrier said.

On Nov. 30, after Dynamex announced the new offer from Greenbriar, shares of the carrier’s common stock rose to $24.31, according to data compiled by Bloomberg News. That was the highest level at which Dynamex shares had changed hands since Nov. 2008, according to Bloomberg.

In its latest complete fiscal year, which ended July 31, Dynamex earned $10.7 million, or $1.09 a share, up 23% from the 2009 fiscal year. Fiscal 2010 revenue rose 1% year-over-year to $406 million.

Dynamex ranks No. 61 on the Transport Topics 100 list of the largest for-hire carriers in the United States and Canada.