SSG Capital Advisors acted as the investment banker to Safe, Inc. in the sale of substantially all of its assets to Point Blank Enterprises, a portfolio company of JLL Partners. The transaction closed this month.
Safe, Inc. is a product development, engineering and technology research firm with a core focus on occupant protection systems, including crashworthy energy-absorbing seating systems, armor and safety restraint systems. The company was founded more than 20 years ago by U.S. Army veteran Dr. Stanley Desjardins with a mission to protect vehicle occupants and warfighters.
Since its founding in 2002, the company has focused on research in energy-absorbing seats and other safety-related technologies. Safe primarily bids on contracts through the Phase I and Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) programs. While historical operations and profitability have remained strong, the company believed an opportunity for substantial growth existed beyond SBIR Phase I and Phase II contracts through the enhancement of its production capacity and utilization of its intellectual property to produce products at a high volume for the U.S. government and blue-chip defense contractors. Given potential procurement issues with third parties producing Safe’s developed products, the company saw the opportunity to produce products in-house and capture recurring, multi-year revenue streams. Accordingly, Safe sought to bring on an investor with industry and government contracting expertise (and potential production capabilities) to fund and ultimately inherit the company’s vision for future growth.
SSG was retained as Safe’s exclusive investment banker to advise the company on strategic alternatives and to conduct a comprehensive marketing process to solicit interest from strategic and financial investors. The process generated interest from several parties and resulted in multiple offers. The company ultimately decided to move forward with Point Blank, as it was deemed the most synergistic and qualified strategic partner for the company on a go-forward basis. SSG’s aerospace and defense industry experience and expertise running competitive sale processes resulted in an outcome that properly capitalized the business and positioned the company to achieve its next level of growth.
Point Blank is a provider of protective solutions, including bullet, fragmentation and stab resistant apparel and related accessories. This transaction marks the third defense contractor company SSG has sold to Point Blank.
