El Pollo Loco, Inc. is the nation’s leading quick-service restaurant chain specializing in flame-grilled chicken and other Mexican inspired entrees. Founded in Guasave, Mexico in 1975, El Pollo Loco’s long-term success stems from the unique preparation of its award-winning “pollo” – fresh chicken marinated in a special recipe of herbs, spices and citrus juices passed down from the founding family. The marinated chicken is then flame-grilled, hand cut and served hot off the grill with warm tortillas and a wide assortment of side dishes and salsas prepared fresh every day.
El Pollo Loco strives to offer the quality of food and dining experience typical of fast casual restaurants while providing the speed, convenience, and value typical of traditional quick-service restaurants (“QSRs”), a combination that it calls “QSR+”, and to provide a value-oriented fast casual dining experience. El Pollo Loco’s distinctive menu features its signature product—citrus-marinated fire-grilled chicken—and a variety of Mexican-inspired entrees that it creates from its chicken. Every day in every restaurant, El Pollo Loco marinates and fire-grills chicken over open flames, and slices whole tomatoes, avocados, serrano peppers, and cilantro to make salsas, guacamole, and cilantro dressings from scratch. The design of El Pollo Loco’s kitchens reveals its Mexican-inspired cooking process and allows customers to watch their Grill Masters and team members fire-grill and hand-cut their signature chicken, as well as team members make burritos, salads, tostadas, bowls, stuffed quesadillas, and chicken entrees.
El Pollo Loco offers customers healthier alternatives to traditional food on the go, served by its team members in a colorful, bright, and contemporary restaurant environment. El Pollo Loco’s distinctive menu with healthier alternatives appeals to consumers across a wide variety of socio-economic backgrounds and drives its balanced composition of sales throughout the day (its “day-part mix”), including at lunch and dinner.
El Pollo Loco is Spanish for “The Crazy Chicken.” It has grown our restaurant system to 484 restaurants, comprised of 213 company-operated and 271 franchised restaurants as of December 26, 2018. El Pollo Loco’s restaurants are located in California, Arizona, Nevada, Texas, and Utah. A typical El Pollo Loco restaurant is a free-standing building with drive-thru service that ranges in size from 2,200 to 3,000 square feet with seating for approximately 50-70 people.
El Pollo Loco’s shares are publicly-traded on NASDAQ under the ticker symbol LOCO.
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International Transmission Company is the country’s largest independently-owned electric transmission company. ITC was previously owned by DTE Energy, parent of Detroit Edison.
ITC’s business strategy was to operate, maintain and invest in transmission infrastructure in order to enhance system integrity and reliability and to reduce transmission constraints. By pursuing this strategy, ITC sought to reduce the overall cost of delivered energy for end-use consumers by providing them with access to electricity from the lowest cost electricity generation sources.
As transmission utilities with rates regulated by the FERC, ITC’s operating subsidiaries earned revenues through fees charged for the use of the electricity transmission systems by customers, which included investor-owned utilities, municipalities, co-operatives, power marketers and alternative energy suppliers. As independent transmission companies, ITC’s transmission subsidiaries were subject to rate regulation only by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC. The rates charged were established using a formulaic cost-of-service model and re-calculated annually, allowing for the recovery of actual expenses and income taxes and a highly certain return of and on invested capital.
ITC initially owned and operated the regulated transmission of high-voltage electricity throughout Southeastern Michigan, including the Detroit metropolitan area. Over time, ITC became a major company by acquiring the adjacent transmission system associated with Consumers Energy, and later building and acquiring transmission assets that spanned eight states across the upper Midwest.
Trimaran exited its investment in ITC through sales into the public equity markets.
Global Crossing Ltd. (“Global Crossing”) was the world’s first independent provider of global long-distance telecommunications facilities and services, utilizing a network of undersea digital fiber optic cable systems and associated terrestrial backhaul capacity. Global Crossing operated as a “carrier’s carrier,” providing tiered pricing and segmented products to licensed providers of international telecommunications services.
Global Crossing commenced operations when it contracted for the construction of Atlantic Crossing (“AC-l”), a 14,000 kilometer digital fiber optic cable system linking the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Germany. Following AC-1, Global Crossing constructed digital cable systems that linked the United States and Japan, and operated on the east and west coasts of North America. Through a merger with Frontier Communications, which owned and operated an extensive terrestrial fiber optic network, Global Crossing became an integrated global provider of end-to-end telecommunications services.
Global Crossing successfully completed its initial public offering approximately two years after its founding, and thereafter became the fastest company to achieve a $40 billion market capitalization up to that time.
Trimaran’s first private equity fund was a founding investor in Global Crossing and exited its investment via the public equity markets.
TeleBank Financial was a federally-chartered savings bank that pioneered alternative forms of customer interaction. Trimaran’s first fund invested in TeleBank to provide it with regulatory capital to support its transformation into the first Internet bank. During Trimaran’s ownership, TeleBank pioneered Internet banking and more than tripled its deposit base.
Trimaran exited its investment when TeleBank was acquired by E*Trade; it is known today as E*Trade Bank.
TNP Enterprises, Inc. Trimaran’s first private equity fund led the going-private LBO of TNP Enterprises, Inc. (“TNP”), which was the first ever leveraged buyout of an investor-owned integrated electric utility. TNP was the parent company of Texas New Mexico Power Company (“TNMP”) and First Choice Power, Inc. (“First Choice”), which together operated as an integrated electric utility in the states of Texas and New Mexico.
TNMP generated, purchased, transmitted and distributed electricity to over 250,000 residential and commercial customers in 85 small to mid-sized communities in Texas and New Mexico. TNP One, which was owned by TNMP until it was sold in October 2002, was a 300 megawatt, lignite fueled generation plant which provided approximately 21% of TNMP’s retail energy requirements. Subsequent to the sale of TNP One, TNMP purchased its retail energy requirement from various non-affiliated suppliers, substantially all of which are purchased under firm contracts. TNMP’s transmission and distribution facilities consist of primarily overhead and underground lines, substations, transformers and meters.
Trimaran exited its investment in TNP when the company was acquired by PNM Resources Inc., parent company of Public Service Company of New Mexico.
Norcraft Companies, L.P. is a leader in manufacturing, assembling and finishing kitchen and bathroom cabinetry in the United States. The Company offers a comprehensive line of high-quality cabinetry, providing customers with a single source for a broad range of products, from stock to high-end, semi-custom cabinetry in both framed and frameless construction. The Company’s brands include Mid Continent Cabinetry®, UltraCraft®, StarMark® and Fieldstone®. Norcraft markets each of its brands nationally, distributing cabinets through an extensive network of kitchen and bath dealers and distributors as well as directly to builders.
Following a successful IPO of Norcraft, Trimaran exited its investment in the company via a sale to Fortune Brands.
Standard Steel, LLC, headquartered in Pittsburgh, PA, is a leading North American integrated manufacturer of steel wheels and axles for use in freight railcars, locomotives and passenger cars. Standard Steel is the only wheel manufacturer that uses the forging process, which produces wheels with superior wear characteristics compared with wheels that are manufactured using a casting process.
Standard Steel made rail car wheels and axles at one plant in Burnham, PA. The plant, which dates to 1795, is the oldest manufacturing plant in continuous operation in the United States. Under Trimaran’s ownership, while thousands of “rust belt” manufacturers were shutting down or moving offshore, Standard Steel completed a major plant upgrade and expansion that allowed the company to grow earnings significantly.
Trimaran’s favorable relationship (from a prior investment) with the United Steelworkers of America, and Standard Steel’s innovative profit-sharing arrangement with labor, facilitated the plant expansion and allowed the workforce to benefit from Standard Steel’s increased profitability.
With this increased production capacity, Standard Steel entered into innovative, multi-year “take or pay” contracts with major customers, providing assured supply for the customers and highly predictable earnings for Standard Steel. Standard Steel more than doubled its earnings during Trimaran’s ownership, and Trimaran exited its investment in Standard Steel via a sale to Sumitomo Metal Industries, Ltd. and Sumitomo Corporation.
IASIS Healthcare Corporation (“IASIS”), located in Franklin, Tennessee, was a leading owner and operator of medium-sized acute care hospitals in high-growth urban and suburban markets.
IASIS operated its hospitals with a strong community focus by offering and developing healthcare services targeted to the needs of the markets it serves, promoting strong relationships with physicians and working with local managed care plans. IASIS owned or leased 18 acute care hospitals and one behavioral health hospital with over 4,000 licensed beds in service. These hospital facilities weere located in six regions: Salt Lake City, Utah; Phoenix, Arizona; Tampa-St. Petersburg, Florida; three cities in Texas, including San Antonio; Las Vegas, Nevada; and West Monroe, Louisiana. The general, acute care hospitals offered a variety of medical and surgical services commonly available in hospitals, including emergency services, general surgery, internal medicine, cardiology, obstetrics, orthopedics and physical rehabilitation. IASIS also had ownership interests in three ambulatory surgery centers, and owned and operated a Medicaid managed health plan in Phoenix called Health Choice Arizona, Inc., or Health Choice.
Trimaran was part of a group that created IASIS by purchasing hospitals from two separate corporate sellers. Trimaran’s first realization came when the company was sold to TPG; Trimaran retained a portion of its ownership in IASIS after the TPG sale, and fully realized its investment when IASIS was acquired by Steward Healthcare Corporation.
