As shareholders of PointsBet Holdings Ltd. approved Fanatics Inc.’s $225 million agreement to buy the Australian firm’s U.S. sports gambling business, its chairman said Fanatics was the right acquirer.
Fanatics, the sports merchandising giant founded in the Jacksonville area, had to outbid DraftKings Inc. to acquire the operations. DraftKings, along with FanDuel, is one of two dominant players in the U.S. sports gambling market.
PointsBet Chairman Brett Paton said in a June 30 address to shareholders the high cost of doing business in the U.S. made it difficult to compete.
He said there are more than 60 companies competing in the U.S. market, but PointsBet is licensed in 15 states and is “one of only nine companies to be granted a license in the critical New York market.”
That made it attractive for Fanatics as it seeks to grow its fledgling sports gambling business.
“Once we decided to sell the U.S. business, we turned our attention to finding the right business partner,” Paton said.
“Fanatics identified in PointsBet many of the attributes needed to be successful in entering the online market. In turn Fanatics has a strong brand and an extensive sports customer base with a fanatical interest in sports,” he said.
Nearly three decades after Lester Jackson founded the company, Jacksonville-based SafeTouch Security has a new investment group which brought in a new CEO to succeed Jackson.
Rockville, Maryland-based FVLCRUM Funds made an equity investment in SafeTouch in partnership with Chicago-based FourFront Strategies, the company said.
As part of the ownership change, Danny White became chief executive of the company that Jackson founded in 1995.
The company said White has more than 25 years of executive experience with technology and security companies, most recently with Honeywell International Inc.
SafeTouch said in a news release that Jackson, who started the company in 1995, “will be continuing to drive leadership and vision for the company” with White, but it did not specify his position moving forward.
“With the additional resources, SafeTouch will be able to expand to more communities to offer security-within-seconds leveraging the industry’s most advanced technologies,” Jackson said in the release.
Besides Jacksonville, SafeTouch also provides its security services to the Tampa, Orlando, Tallahassee and Savannah, Georgia, markets, according to its website.
FLVCRUM’s website said the firm targets investments in “fundamentally strong lower middle market companies.”
Terms of the investment were not announced.
Duos Technologies Group Inc. said in a June 28 Securities and Exchange Commission filing it expects to report second-quarter revenue of $1.8 million to $2.1 million, lower than its first-quarter revenue of $2.64 million.
The Jacksonville-based railroad technology company had said in its first-quarter report it expected second-quarter revenue equal to or slightly lower than the first quarter.
Duos said the decrease in revenue is due to timing factors of booking revenue.
The company has said it expects a pickup in revenue in the second half of 2023, and has projected full-year revenue to rise 33% to 40% from 2022 to between $20 million and $21 million.
GEN Restaurant Group Inc. successfully completed its initial public offering, with its stock rising from its $12 IPO price to a high of $19.99 on its first day of trading June 28.
The California-based company operates 34 GEN Korean BBQ restaurants in seven states and according to its IPO filing, it has signed leases to open seven more restaurants, including one in Jacksonville.
The company has not responded to phone and email messages seeking more information about the Jacksonville location.
GEN had filed plans to sell 3 million shares at $10 to $12 each but increased the IPO to 3.6 million shares sold at $12.
GEN was the second restaurant chain with interests in Jacksonville to have a strong reception from an IPO in June, signaling investor appetite for restaurant stocks.
Mediterranean fast-casual restaurant chain CAVA Group Inc. sold 14.44 million shares at $22 each, and the stock jumped to $43.78 on its first trading day June 15.
Washington, D.C.-based CAVA operates 263 restaurants in 22 states, including four in Jacksonville.
The Jacksonville restaurants were converted from Zoës Kitchen, which CAVA acquired in 2018.
Motion & Control Enterprises acquired Jacksonville-based Power & Pumps Inc., according to a June 27 news release by Power & Pumps’ adviser Heritage Capital Group Inc. of Jacksonville.
Power & Pumps distributes power transmission products, pumps, electric motors and drives, and other related equipment for industrial and municipal water/wastewater markets in Florida and Georgia.
Motion & Control Enterprises is a Pennsylvania-based supplier of technical fluid power, automation, flow control, compressed air and lubrication products, repair and services, and bespoke solutions.
Terms of the deal were not announced.