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By BOB COX
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
FORT WORTH -- Nearly 27 years
after he founded Texas Aviation Services, Carl "Woody" Woodard and
his son Tim, the company's president, are cashing in, but only one
of them is getting out.
The Woodards completed the
sale of their fast-growing helicopter completion and overhaul company
last week to Ranger Aerospace & Aeronautics, a locally based
private-equity investment company.
Ranger President Steve Townes
said in an interview Friday that the all-cash acquisition is the
first step in a plan to build a much larger company, through both
growth and other acquisitions.
"Starting with Texas Aviation
Services, we're going to build the largest and best rotorcraft technical-services
company in the mid-South," said Townes, adding that he's already
investigating other businesses.
All of the principals declined
to reveal financial details. But based on information they did disclose,
Texas Aviation has doubled in size over the past three years to
about a $20 million enterprise with about 100 people working for
it at Meacham Field.
Texas Aviation is benefiting
from the huge increase in demand for new civilian and military helicopters
that has come with the economic boom, increased spending by law
enforcement agencies and other helicopter users, and the requirements
of the U.S. forces engaged in Afghanistan, Iraq and other areas.
The company has won orders
to complete more than 50 new civilian helicopters, installing instruments,
communications and other systems. And it recently undertook a project
to refurbish, rewire and repaint 23 well-worn Sikorsky UH-60 Blackhawk
helicopters for the National Guard.
With all that work in the
pipeline and more on the way, Carl Woodard said he was happy to
entertain the overture from Ranger.
"I'm 76 years old and I don't
want to do this anymore," said Woodard, who started the company
in September 1981 to customize business aircraft interiors. "The
business is just exploding, and I don't want to do this."
Ranger Aerospace is headed
by Townes and Brian Nerney, both of Grapevine. Trinity Hunt Partners
of Dallas, a private-equity investment arm of the Lamar Hunt family,
is the majority stockholder of Ranger and provided the bulk of the
funding for the deal.
Both of the Woodards will
retain a stake in Texas Aviation. Tim Woodard, who joined his father
in 1991 after retiring from the Air Force, will continue as president,
running the day-to-day operations.
Tim Woodard said he's excited
about the company's prospects for growth now that it has the financial
capital and management expertise of Ranger behind it. "I see an
opportunity to do something that Woody and I never could have done,"
he said. "I think these guys will do everything in their power to
give us the tools to be everything we can be."
The new owners have tapped
into local helicopter industry expertise by naming John Murphey,
the former chief executive of Bell Helicopter, to the company's
board of directors.
The purchase of Texas Aviation
is the third big investment in the aviation services industry by
Townes and Ranger since 1997. Most recently, in December 2001 the
company began a series of acquisitions centered on Keystone Helicopter,
a company based in Coatesville, Pa., that, like Texas Aviation,
was heavily involved in helicopter completions and repairs. In April
2004, an Arlington company, Composite Technology, was acquired and
merged into Keystone.
In December 2005, after tripling
the size of the Keystone operations to more than $100 million in
annual revenue, Ranger sold the company to Sikorsky Aircraft.
Townes said his goal is to
at least triple the size of Texas Aviation in less than the four
years it took with Keystone. The company doubled its work to 200,000
man-hours in the past two years. With helicopter manufacturers like
Bell and Eurocopter sitting on two- and three-year order backlogs,
Townes sees no letup in his company's completion business for years
to come. He also expects to get more military work.
"The entire market is just
swelling," Townes said. "Most of the industry pundits are forecasting
10 years of steady market growth." Texas Aviation is working with
another Fort Worth company, InterConnect Wiring, and Computer Sciences
on the National Guard helicopter project. It involves completely
rewiring all of the electrical systems and refurbishing the aircraft,
which were built in the 1980s and were used by special operations
forces in Iraq and elsewhere before being turned over to the National
Guard.
It takes six months to complete
work on each helicopter; the company hopes to cut that to four months.
Seven helicopters are in the shop, with others in the pipeline.
The project, which began
with one helicopter in 2005, could be the tip of an iceberg of business.
"There's hundreds of helicopters out there that need the same work,"
Townes said.
Texas Aviation has taken
over three hangars at Meacham that adjoin its existing facility
and remodeled the old Sandpiper Motel for offices and work space
to accommodate the project, doubling its facilities to about 140,000
square feet. City officials have given the company the option of
taking over additional space and more than 10 acres of land totaling
more than 500,000 square feet at the south end of the airport for
future expansions.
With internal growth and
other acquisitions Texas Aviation and associated businesses could
become a $100 million to $150 million operation, Townes said, occupying
250,000 to 300,000 square feet and employing 1,000 or more people
within 10 years.
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