The owners of the bus company Kinetic are about to fire the starting gun on a sale process, with talk in the market that the price aspirations are close to $4bn.
Investment bank Macquarie Capital is running the sale process, which is set to get under way within a fortnight.
Suitors are likely to include infrastructure funds such as Stonepeak, Morrison & Co and Igneo.
Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, which already owns bus assets, is expected to sidestep the process.
Kinetic operates in Britain as well as Australia. The Australian operation is the stronger performer.
Kinetic’s major market is Queensland.
It is promoting itself as a growth story with the rollout of its electric fleet.
Kinetic is owned by OP Trust, a Toronto-based pension fund which in 2019 purchased the Queensland-based Transit Australia Group, which later became Kinetic.
Transit Australia offers bus design and manufacturing, urban network design, planning and operation and workforce development and training.
Its bus services include Sunbus and Surfside Buslines.
It also owns SkyBus, which operates express airport transfers for domestic and international passengers.
The company is being pitched to buyers as generating more than $400m in earnings by next financial year, about half of which is generated in Australia.
It describes itself as Australasia’s biggest bus network with more than 100 long-term contracts in local communities, 7400 staff and a fleet of 5000 buses, including over 300 zero-emission buses.
OP Trust had the business on the market in 2020.
Back then, the price tag was around $1bn.
However, that was before it purchased the British bus business Go-Ahead for about $1.5bn.
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