Three funds through to round two in Singapore Post’s Australia auction

Singapore Post’s sale plans had been well flagged within its home market.

Singapore Post is understood to have shortlisted three suitors in the $1bn contest to buy its Australian portfolio of logistics assets: Pacific Equity Partners, Blackstone and BGH Capital.

The second round of the competition is under way, with final offers probably due towards the end of November.

So far, Blackstone, advised by Goldman Sachs, is shaping up as the frontrunner, say sources.

First-round bids were accepted last week. New Zealand-listed Mainfreight and Allegro’s Team Global Express were among the suitors.

Strategic suitors have been excluded from the process because of concerns surrounding the sharing of sensitive information.

On offer are the Singapore Post-owned businesses Freight Management Holdings and CouriersPlease, which are being sold through Bank of America.

The businesses generate about $120m of annual EBITDA.

Singapore Post’s sale plans had been well flagged within its home market.

It describes Freight Management Holdings as a diversified logistics holding company with fourth party logistics and warehousing, transportation and technology divisions.

Blackstone is the world’s largest alternative asset manager with more than $US1bn in assets under management. It’s known for its expertise extracting value out of industrial businesses and also concentrates entertainment and leisure, healthcare and life sciences and digital assets, real estate, infrastructure and renewable energy.

It bought Orica spin-off Ixom for $750m in 2014 before selling the business to Keppel for $1.1bn in 2018.

Blackstone bought Australian-listed Crown Resorts for $8.9bn in 2023.

It made headlines this year by acquiring data centre giant AirTrunk for $24bn with backers, and considered a buyout of information technology company Iress. Last year it weighed up a deal to buy Ticketek owner TEG Group.

The ramp-up in sale processes in Australia comes as investment bankers once again dusting off pitch books for listed stocks in the industrials space. With interest rate cuts looming, some suspect that share prices have hit their low point.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that private equity was involved in 34 take-private deals in the US in the first nine months of the year, compared with 27 for the comparable period a year earlier, according to data provider PitchBook.

Globally, private equity took private 72 companies through to September 30, down from 77 a year earlier.

That compares to at least 27 listed buyouts announced on the Australian market for this year.

Fuelling private equity’s acquisitive appetite is a large amount of dry powder – capital raised but not committed to deals – as well as ample access to debt financing, from syndicated bank loans to private credit.

Private equity and venture capital funds held a record $US2.62 trillion in dry powder as of July 10, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence and Preqin data.