Culligan to buy AquaVenture Holdings of Tampa for $1.1 billion
AquaVenture provides water filtration, desalination and other services to commercial, government and institutional clients in North and South America and the Caribbean.

By Richard Danielson
Tampa Bay Times
Published: Dec 31, 2019

TAMPA - Culligan, a household name in water treatment, is buying Tampa-grown AquaVenture Holdings for $1.1 billion, including debt.

AquaVenture, currently a publicly traded company, has 665 employees, about a sixth of them at its principal offices north of Race Track Road near the Hillsborough-Pinellas county line. It sells two different kinds of water services through two divisions, Seven Seas Water and Quench, and expects to end this year with revenues of about $200 million.

Seven Seas Water operates 11 desalination plants that deliver 8.5 billion gallons of drinking water a year to government, institutional and other customers in the Caribbean and South America. It also operates more than 100 waste waster treatment plants. Quench, which accounts for a little more than half the company's revenue, provides filtered-water coolers and related services to about 55,000 commercial and institutional customers in more than 300 metro areas across the United States and Canada.

"AquaVenture is a leading player in water purification solutions with a strong record of innovation,” Culligan chief executive officer Scott Clawson said in a joint announcement of the merger. Culligan is based in suburban Chicago and is owned by Advent International, a global private equity firm with $54 billion in assets.

Culligan has agreed to pay $27.10 per share of AquaVenture stock. If approved by AquaVenture shareholders, the sale is expected to close in early April.

"We are pleased to reach this agreement to join forces with Culligan and its leading presence in the global water industry, and believe it delivers compelling value to all AquaVenture stakeholders,” AquaVenture president and chief executive officer Anthony Ibargüen said. "Our leadership team is proud of the development and success of AquaVenture, and excited for what our employees can accomplish in partnership with Culligan in the future."

After the merger, AquaVenture will be part of Culligan's operations as a privately held company. In a Q&A for employees, AquaVenture said "Culligan has stated their intention is for our teams to stay in place and operate independently.”

AquaVenture was founded in 2006 by Douglas R. Brown, now the chairman of the company's board, with several former colleagues from Ionics, a water company acquired by General Electric.

It established Seven Seas in Tampa in 2007 to provide business development, engineering, procurement, accounting, finance and other administrative services to its operations. Its acquisition of Quench in 2014 set off a period of rapid growth that has seen the company acquire 22 other companies in the past five years.

"We've invested in building scale in this business for the better part of the last decade to be able to be the one consistent, fully integrated national provider of these services,” Ibargüen said during comments about the growth of Quench during an earnings call in November.

AquaVenture went public with an initial public offering of stock in 2016 and has a current total stock market value of about $862 million. Its stock was trading up slightly Tuesday morning at $27.15 a share.