United Rentals Completes Acquisition of Matting Supplier Yak Access
United Rentals has acquired Yak Access LLC, Yak Mat LLC and New South Access & Environmental Solutions LLC from Platinum Equity for approximately $1.1 billion in cash. The transaction and related expenses were funded through a combination of newly issued senior unsecured notes and existing capacity under the company’s ABL facility.
Yak is a leader in the North American matting industry with a fleet of approximately 600,000 hardwood, softwood, and composite mats providing surface protection across construction and maintenance, repair and operations applications. Yak predominantly serves customers in the utility and midstream verticals. In 2023 Yak generated $171 million of adjusted EBITDA on $353 million of adjusted revenue in more than 40 U.S. states. Yak Mat is the largest supplier of hardwood mats in North America. Yak carries all mat types to accommodate any project type.
Matthew Flannery, CEO of United Rentals, said, “Today we are very excited to welcome Yak to the United Rentals family. This is an acquisition with both strong strategic and financial merits. Not only does it augment our growth capacity with the addition of a leading North American matting solutions provider but it also further differentiates our one-stop-shop value proposition to customers. Combined, this has proven to be a winning strategy for building long-term value for our investors.”
The company plans to update its 2024 financial outlook to reflect the combined operations when it releases financial results for the first quarter in April.
Yak’s CEO at the time of the sale was Frank Bardonaro, who served as president and chief operating officer of Maxim Crane for nine years.
About the Author
Michael Roth
Editor
Michael Roth has covered the equipment rental industry full time for RER since 1989 and has served as the magazine’s editor in chief since 1994. He has nearly 30 years experience as a professional journalist. Roth has visited hundreds of rental centers and industry manufacturers, written hundreds of feature stories for RER and thousands of news stories for the magazine and its electronic newsletter RER Reports. Roth has interviewed leading executives for most of the industry’s largest rental companies and manufacturers as well as hundreds of smaller independent companies. He has visited with and reported on rental companies and manufacturers in Europe, Central America and Asia as well as Mexico, Canada and the United States. Roth was co-founder of RER Reports, the industry’s first weekly newsletter, which began as a fax newsletter in 1996, and later became an online newsletter. Roth has spoken at conventions sponsored by the American Rental Association, Associated Equipment Distributors, California Rental Association and other industry events and has spoken before industry groups in several countries. He lives and works in Los Angeles when he’s not traveling to cover industry events.