HEERENVEEN, the Netherlands (BRAIN) — Accell Group N.V. has agreed to sell its U.S. business, including the worldwide registrations for Diamondback, Redline and IZIP, to Regent LP, the California investment firm that bought Mavic earlier this year.
Regent and Accell will partner for two years to distribute Raleigh, Haibike and Ghost, which Accell continues to own.
The sale was completed Tuesday. Regent paid $1 for the U.S. brands with a maximum potential earn out of $15 million.
Accell announced last month that it had sold the Canadian rights to Redline, Diamondback and Raleigh to Canadian Tire.
The company said the sale completes the strategic review of its troubled North American business, which it announced last year. Accell's North American operations lost 11 million euros ($12.2 million) in the first half this year. "With the agreement reached, the profit dilution of the North American business is eliminated from August 6th onwards," the company said.
"With the agreement reached, the profit dilution of the North American business is eliminated" — Accell Group
Ton Anbeek, the CEO of Accell Group, said, "With this announcement, we have completed the strategic review of our North American business. This allows us to eliminate the profit dilution, while we can continue to distribute our global brands to the U.S. and benefit from the growing demand for e-bikes. We look forward to working with Regent as our U.S. distributor and as global supplier of its sports brand Mavic.
"The completion of the strategic review results in a one-off charge which we will absorb in H2 2019. We are glad that we can now put our full focus on accelerating growth of our European core business," Anbeek said in a release Wednesday.
Besides Mavic, Regent has investments in La Senza, Plainville Farms, Sassoon, MasterCuts, Regis UK, SuperCuts UK, Sunset Magazine, Lillian Vernon and a media portfolio comprised of 18 newspapers, magazines and television platforms including Military Times, Army Times, Navy Times, Defense News, Federal Times and HistoryNet. Regent is based in Beverly Hills, California.
Accell's remaining bike brands include Babboe, Batavus, Ghost, Haibike, Koga, Lapierre, Raleigh, Sparta and Winora. Its house P&A brand is XLC. Last year it sold about 1.1 million bicycles and recorded sales of over 1 billion euros ($1.12 billion).
