It took some effort, but Rocky Mountain Equipment (RME) announced recently that the company would be going private, thirteen years after going public.
In a nutshell, the move means the company is able to focus on customer’s needs, and will be able to plan longer-term, according to Garrett Ganden, chief executive officer of RME.
When asked about the privatization, Ganden says “there’s a number of different reasons, but first and foremost what we wanted to make sure we were able to do is to get in touch with the customers, the producers, the farmers, the employees that we have.” As a public company, RME was spending more and more time dealing with items like quarterly reporting, board meetings, and other things that distracted from customer relations, he says.
The company went through a very transparent process — evaluations by the special committee, making sure everyone was getting a fair price for the company — which took time to transition back to private, says Ganden.
The other benefit of privatization is that longer-term goals for the company can be planned. Ganden says the company looks forward to being more “nimble” and being able to respond more quickly to when things go wrong. He adds that as a CEO, when the company was public, he spent at least half his time with investors and analysts dealing with public company concerns.
This new year brings some optimism for equipment dealerships, and since commodity prices are good right now, Ganden’s looking forward to a good year getting equipment into the marketplace and reconnecting with customers.
“My intent is to go out to all the different branches, get out with either the sales people or even within the branches and just talk to the customers,” says Ganden. “It’s not about quarter to quarter anymore, it’s about how do we build long-term and lasting relationships?”
Listen in to the full conversation to hear more about RME’s strategy for the future, expansion plans, and focusing on each branch’s needs:
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