Are the warmer inland temperatures of Brea the reason the city’s become the HVAC capital of Southern California?
Commercial customer-focused CoolSys continues its aggressive roll-up strategy of regional AC and heating companies. Late last month, it added North Carolina’s Thermal Resource Sales and Supermarket Environment Services Co. to the fold; its 20th acquisition to date. The private equity-backed company now does in excess of $500M a year in revenue.
Meanwhile the city’s Service Champions, also PE-backed but which services homeowners rather than corporate clients, is steadily approaching $500M in sales; it’s acquired 12 companies in the past two years and was in the process of buying a couple more at press time.
See Peter J. Brennan’s story on how Leland Smith’s strategy of offering higher salaries for high-quality, friendly employees is paying dividends.
CoolSys CEO Adam Coffey moonlights as a business author. Last week, he disclosed via LinkedIn that his second book, “The Exit Strategy Playbook,” will be released in September. His first book, “The Private Equity Playbook,” “held the No. 1 spot in various business categories for 2 years straight and continues to sell well today,” he notes.
Coffey said he’d ultimately like to write five “Playbooks.”
Service Champions’ Leland Smith, meanwhile, has a unique writing-related hobby of his own—collecting the autographs of U.S. presidents.
During a recent meeting at his office in Brea, he showed a wall full of signed photos of U.S. presidents including Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter and the Bushes. The most valuable picture he has is of Abe Lincoln, he said.
Smith’s hobby began when he first saw Richard Nixon at the opening of the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda. At the time his business was plumbing, not fixing heaters or AC units.
When he met Nixon, Smith told him, “I want to give you my business card because now you’ve got a friend who is a plumber,” Smith recalled.
He told Brennan he didn’t immediately realize his gaffe until his wife reminded him that it was “the plumbers who broke into Watergate!”
With over $175M in buys around Saddleback Medical Center, Healthcare Realty Trust’s investment spree in Laguna Hills makes it one of OC’s most active investors over the past 18 months. See Katie Murar’s story for more.
The Nashville, Tenn.-based REIT isn’t the biggest-spending medical-focused real estate investor in the area over that time, though. That title now falls to Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian, which has gone from tenant to owner at its Irvine hospital campus.
Hoag recently completed the purchase of the Irvine property from Denver REIT Healthpeak Properties. The completion of the sale—in the works for over a year—was quietly disclosed in a Healthpeak presentation earlier this month, our Jessie Yount reports.
The REIT, until late last year based in Irvine itself, said it received $226M in proceeds from the sale.
Hoag has been in planning mode for a major expansion to its 154-bed hospital along Sand Canyon Avenue in recent months; see next week’s print edition for more on its plans in the city.
