LFM CAPITAL takes majority stake in NOVEX
Context
This primary recapitalization transaction formalizes the partnership between LFM Capital and Novex, representing the second platform acquisition out of LFM’s third fund and marking the transition of the business from a family-run enterprise into an institutionalized manufacturing platform. The deal structure features an extensive equity rollover by founder and Chief Executive Officer Chuck Lynn alongside his family, preserving complete executive alignment, safeguarding proprietary product-formulation intellectual property, and ensuring stable customer relationship continuity across the wholesale network. The transaction is fundamentally motivated by immediate production capacity constraints at the target's Ohio plant, where historical demand has outpaced capital deployment for factory floor machinery, leaving significant unexploited volume growth. Post-closing commercial priorities will focus on leveraging LFM’s internal engineering resources to execute targeted capital expenditure programs aimed at expanding extrusion throughput, professionalizing marketing and business development divisions to capture new original equipment manufacturer accounts, and underwriting an aggressive, programmatic buy-and-build strategy to consolidate the highly fragmented North American industrial belting and plastic consumables sector.
NOVEX, which reported an EBITDA margin of in 2022, is valued in this transaction at an EV/EBITDA multiple of , a level to compare with the average currently observed in the Industry & Manufacturing sector (11.6x).
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Target
Novex operates as a specialized manufacturer and distributor of high-performance polyurethane component products, primarily focusing on custom-engineered conveyor belting and sheet solutions designed for severe-abrasion industrial applications. The company distributes its product portfolio through established original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and wholesale industrial distributor channels across North America, serving diversified end markets including agriculture, food processing, forestry, high-speed packaging, and bulk materials recycling. Operating from its centralized production facility in Wadsworth, Ohio, the company maintains a proprietary portfolio of more than twenty-five technical belting specifications and differentiated sheet configurations, requiring rigorous floor-level scheduling and raw elastomer formulation management to optimize extrusion line throughput and maintain baseline manufacturing margins.
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REFERENCES
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Press release: view release
Target: novex
Acquirer: lfm capital