Big Deals in Arkansas Up 30% In Value

Uniti Group Inc. headquarters in Little Rock. (Emma Mayes)

The value of the biggest deals announced in Arkansas last year totaled $18.55 billion, a 30% increase over the $14.32 billion announced in 2023.

That $14.32 billion figure, however, was not the figure Arkansas Business originally reported last year, when we put the biggest deals announced in 2023 at $29.22 billion. The reason for the big change is a simple one: The $29.22 billion included a deal that fell apart, the planned purchase by Nippon Steel of Tokyo of U.S. Steel of Pittsburgh, a deal valued at the time it was announced, in December 2023, at $14.9 billion.

President Joe Biden, citing national security concerns, in early January blocked the sale of U.S. Steel, and President Donald Trump has also said he opposes the deal.

We have included on the list this year, as we did last year for the first time, deals that involve big investments in a company, rather than restricting the list to a company or investors outright buying another company or its assets. This highlights the increasing activity of private equity companies in Arkansas, companies like SymBiosis Capital Management of Bentonville, which, along with a number of other investors, purchased a $215 million stake in Metsera Inc., a drugmaker targeting obesity treatments.

The biggest deals list includes only those deals believed to be valued at $10 million or more.

And because the values aren’t always announced, the list involves some guesswork. For example, Arkansas Business included the May purchase of the Arkansas Travelers Class AA minor league baseball team by Diamond Baseball Holdings. Did the purchase meet the $10 million threshold? Well, we know that the online sports news website The Athletic reported last year that minor league franchises were selling at what were believed to be record prices, and we looked at what other franchises were reported to be selling for, so, making an educated — if potentially wrong — guess, we included the Travelers purchase on the list.

Central Moloney’s acquisition, announced in February 2024, of Cam Tran surely topped $10 million, with Cam Tran described as “the largest Canadian manufacturer of distribution transformers and the largest North American producer of amorphous metal transformers.”

Sometimes we discover sale prices that weren’t announced at the time the deal was. Real estate records revealed that the purchase of former Husqvarna facilities and a solar farm in Nashville by Phoenix Nashville AR Industrial Investors totaled at least $13.49 million.

And, as always, not every merger, acquisition or investment is announced, any one of which, if large enough, could easily skew comparisons to previous years.

But it’s the most valuable deals that tend to draw the most interest, and they include the merger of Uniti Group with Windstream Holdings, both of Little Rock, which is No. 1 on the list with a $13.4 billion valuation. Although neither company has released a transaction value, that is the valuation that has been widely reported based on the debt, cash, stock and combined company revenue included in the deal.

No. 2 on the list is Walmart’s $2.3 billion acquisition of Vizio, a maker of “smart” televisions and other entertainment equipment.

Rock Dental’s $90M

Smaller investments, however, also merit attention. At No. 11 on the list was the $90 million secured by Rock Dental Brands of Little Rock from TPG Twin Brook Capital Partners of Chicago and Audax Private Debt of New York. The funding is helping Rock Dental, which has 109 affiliated clinics in five states and 850 employees, expand.

“We’re focused on strengthening our presence in the markets where we already operate,” said Kristi Casey, CEO of Rock Dental. Those five states are Arkansas, Alabama, Missouri, Tennessee and Florida.

“We have a strong emphasis on continuing to expand in Arkansas as well,” she said. “Our goal there is to really play a meaningful role in improving the state’s oral health rankings.” Arkansas had only 41 dentists per 100,000 people in 2023, compared with 60 per 100,000 nationwide and the least of any state, according to the American Dental Association.

“That’s been something we’ve talked about for a number of years here, is how do we invest in Arkansas and pull us out of the bottom by expanding our access to care, educating communities, ensuring more people get treatment they need, so that’s a big goal for us inside the state,” Casey said.

But Rock Dental is also focused on growing in the other four states in which it operates, she said, “and we’re strategically looking at opportunities in new states. We’re very careful because we want to make sure that where we go and what we do matches our core values.”

Anticipation Is High

Globally, the mergers and acquisitions market rebounded somewhat in 2024 compared with 2023, rising 8% to $3.4 trillion, according to Dealogic. But activity during 2023 was a 10-year low.

Asked what was behind this increase in activity, Marshall McKissack, who leads the M&A practice at Stephens Inc. of Little Rock, cited improved views on the economy and some relief on interest rates. “The cost of financing was better,” he said.

Dealmaking “continues to be better in the U.S. than globally, although both picked up,” McKissack said. “The economy is definitely stronger domestically than in Europe and elsewhere. Certainly that theme continues into ’25.”

In terms of mergers and acquisitions activity, the technology sector “continues to garner a lot of attention,” he said. Artificial intelligence “is certainly at the forefront in ’24 and headed into ’25. A lot of derivatives around that, with energy to support it, data centers, technology surrounding those things, I think, would be places of focus.

“With the yield curve steepening a little bit,” McKissack said, he expects dealmaking in financial services and banks to continue to pick up.

Overall, he said, the anticipation surrounding “the dealmaking environment of ’25 is extraordinarily high.” McKissack said that while inflation remains somewhat stubborn, it seems to be under better control, the interest rate environment is steadier, “the economy continues to chug along, and employment feels really good. The backdrop has been really favorable and people have been anticipating that.”

Trump has moved to slash federal regulations, and “less regulation is a big deal both just in the dealmaking environment and then on business in general, the cost of it, complying, red tape, etc.,” McKissack said. “All of that has been exciting.”

As for the uncertainty surrounding tariffs, he said, “There is concern around that and what that does to supply chains, inflation, etc.”

But all in all, he said, “there is a tremendous amount of enthusiasm for deals and the dealmaking environment in ’25, so the anticipation is extraordinarily high.”