TriMas To Channel Roberto Duran, Say No Mas To Horizon Global On June 30

TriMas(TRS) has had a long and winding road as a company. It originally began life as Campbell Industries, headed up by former Masco(MAS) executive Brian Campbell.  Masco backed Campbell and sold many of its smaller manufacturing businesses to Campbell, resulting in a name change to TriMas. TriMas, owned largely by Masco, continued to acquire manufacturing assets until its own 1998 acquisition by MascoTech, another Masco affiliate. In late 2000, MascoTech was purchased by a private equity firm which rolled it up with several other operations and renamed it Metaldyne. TriMas was spun out of Metaldyne in a 2007 IPO. Up until March 2011, Masco continued to own over 5% of TriMas. Masco, of course, is currently engaging in its own spinoff of its TopBuild business.

Although, TriMas had previously referred to the business being spun off as the Cequent business, the new company will, in fact, be named Horizon Global. For every five shares of TriMas owned on the record date of June 25, shareholders will receive two shares of Horizon Global, which will trade under the HZN ticker, after the close of business on June 30.

Horizon Global is a designer, manufacturer and distributor of a wide variety of high-quality, custom-engineered towing, trailering, cargo management and other related accessory products on a global basis, serving the automotive aftermarket, retail and original equipment channels. Horizon Global will be comprised of TriMas’ Cequent Americas and Cequent APEA segments. These combined segments reported revenue of more than $600 million in 2014, with a 10% compound annual growth rate from the end of 2010 through 2014. Horizon Global will have approximately 2,800 employees located at 20 facilities throughout the world. Horizon Global’s management team, including A. Mark Zeffiro, president and chief executive officer, and David Rice, chief financial officer, will be located in the new company’s headquarters in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

The management of both companies hosted an analyst day last week where they provided extensive detail on each. A transcript is available here. The Horizon Global prospectus can be found here.

Disclosure: The authors holds shares of Masco