BlueLinx completed sale-leaseback transactions for four of its warehouses for an aggregate cash purchase price of $110 million, the distributor revealed today.
The warehouses are in Lawrenceville, Ga.; Bellingham, Mass.; Butner, N.C.; and Frederick, Md., BlueLink said in an SEC filing.
The deal with affiliates of Brennan Investment Group continue BlueLinx’s attempts to reduce its debt; for instance, it sold a facility and did two sale-leasebacks in March 2017. The money generated from the sale-leasebacks were used Jan. 10 to pay off the remaining $97.85 million outstanding under a 2006 loan and security agreement.
Such deals figured into BlueLinx’s Nov. 2 announcement that real estate gains from a year earlier helped cause the company’s net profit to shrink to $5.7 million from $15.0 million in 2016’s third quarter, a period in which the company posted $13.9 million in real estate gains from facility sales.
Likewise, net sales grew for July through September rose just $3.3 million, or 0.7%, to $479.3 million. But sales at facilities in operation both quarters grew by $15.3 million or 3.3%, BlueLinx noted then.
