Meridian Waste Solutions, Inc., an innovative technology company, announces its execution of a definitive agreement to sell the equity interest of its wholly-owned subsidiaries that house its Solid Waste Group to Warren Equity Partners Fund II in exchange for approximately $87 million in debt assumption and $3 million in cash.  

Plan to Reduce Indebtedness and Focus Growth Areas 
Meridian’s business has historically been comprised of its solid waste collection, transfer and disposal services.  However, the Company recently began to shift its focus to growth of its innovative technology units, including biomass, and healthcare technology services, within which the Company has identified several compelling additional acquisition opportunities for value creation at rates that are disproportionately greater than the Company’s solid waste business. 

While the solid waste business has driven much of the Company’s growth to date, the associated debt burden (approximately $95 million), the liquidity required to service that debt (approximately $11 million per year), and the substantial capital expenditure needs of the business, restrict the Company’s ability to allocate capital to new and more profitable initiatives.

"We were able to scale and grow our solid waste unit very rapidly, but the associated debt burden and cash needs were a bottleneck in restricting our access to cost-effective sources of growth capital," said Jeff Cosman, the Company’s Chief Executive Officer. "Thus we developed a strategic plan to reduce debt and improve margins and liquidity in ways that are accretive to the Company’s value, thereby enabling the Company to access and use more growth capital at improved rates of return. The removal of this debt and capital needs provides us the flexibility to pursue higher growth opportunities to grow at a much faster pace in our innovative technology, biomass and technology groups."

Moving Forward 
"After closing on the sale of our solid waste group, we intend to re-brand the public company as Attis Industries, Inc. and currently believe that our remaining assets can generate approximately $3 million in pre-tax earnings (versus previous years of net losses) in 2018, or approximately $0.15 per common share," continued Cosman. "We also believe that reducing our debt load by more than 90% paves the way for us to aggressively pursue several acquisitions that we’re currently evaluating.  We believe that by removing this debt bottleneck, we are placing ourselves in a much stronger position for all of our stakeholders, including our shareholders."

To read the full story, visit https://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/meridian-waste-solutions-executes-agreement-to-sell-its-solid-waste-management-assets-20180220-00921.

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