Racing giant Andretti Acquisition
A fact that the technology and the state-of-the-art technology in a lot of race cars eventually winds up in some form or another in the cars that we buy on the private market when you can finally get a car with the manufacturing and supply chain issues these days bring the other thing race car fans know is that if you've ever been to the infield at the motor speedway back in the day there is treasure and trouble to be found you're raising a great deal of money looking for treasure so what are you going to do with this blank check company that is now trading what are you going to acquire uh we don't know yet um you know the process of vetting the companies we've we've actually been lucky enough to have 40 companies already come to us with interest for us to acquire them we're just you know we're gonna we haven't started the vetting process yet it will be probably in the next week bill you and have known each other for a long time both professionally and personally tell us how you decided to work together on acquisition sure had retired from us concrete about a year and a half ago and around of last year came to me with the idea of starting a spec he had uh he knew that he had a really good brand he has a fantastic network that the have built over the last 50 years he has the ability to trace that uh test out technologies on the racetrack that uh make it into the commercial uh mobility space he also knew that he needed somebody that had public company experiences or experience and had done that for entire career after left the army having successfully run us concrete and actually sponsored his son's race car where our business interests intersected uh he came to me because we've known each other for 50 years he trusted me and from there uh here we are today uh bill following up on that though mean we're in a technological revolution as we go from internal combustion engines to electric vehicles imagine there's a great many companies how do you weed out those which are not worthy of acquisition or merger from those which are truly gems sure need to have need to have a good management team they need to hopefully have need that is not being met in the current marketplace uh hopefully they are that we can make them public company ready remember this is all about taking a private company probably entrepreneurial a founder that that's more of an inventor than a public company and three months into the process you know they're a reporting company and a lot of specs of where a lot of these back companies have tripped up in that it's a combination that they have some competitive advantage a good management team and the ability to go public and provide a market need that's not being met right now there were rumors last year that autosport was looking to buy potentially a team would you consider uh acquiring a company in that space through acquisition no is actually separate from the racing side in terms of that you know we uh yeah m still interested we're still looking at um but have backers for are very interested in doing it um completely different now if the team can help in any way uh then obviously then you know that we'll be there to help um but uh you know it really has nothing to do with that uh m gonna deviate a from what you're doing business-wise because we're excited to see when you actually do this the funds and merge but from the racing side the young people have the the the excitement these days for and for car racing or because mean there are teenagers today who don't want to get their driver's license which blows me away can't believe it but does it still hold mean m old enough to remember singing back home again in at the 500. Going on it is a little strange i gotta admit um that's one thing that's cool for you know we've been in the sustainability space with formula e which is an all-electric series it's a world championship series it's actually the only sanctioned world championship electric series in the world so uh we've been in that space as well as um extreme e which is a new series which is electric off-road racing we have think uh been able to keep the young fan interested because a lot of the youngsters nowadays are very concerned about the environment and things like that so think we've been able to get a lot of new fans in that way through that series those two series bill want to dive a deeper what specific criteria are you looking for in an acquisition target because as believe mentioned earlier there were already companies interested in a with acquisition so how do you really parse through these uh kayaks well there are obviously some pre-revenue companies because they're on the cutting edge and probably have sharpest growth curve uh we'll look at them they also bring a lot of risk we also have a number companies that have uh that have more established and are safer bets but uh like said before they need to have product or a competitive advantage a niche that has had not been met by any other uh any other public companies at this space at this time they do need to have a good management team in place
You must be logged in to post a comment.