AKRON — Mavis Tire Express Services Corp.'s pending acquisition of TBC Corp.'s retail business, 595 retail stores in 15 states, will rank as the largest transaction in the retail tire business in the U.S. in the past 25-plus years.
It also marks the fifth major acquisition in the past eight years for Millwood, N.Y.-based Mavis Tire Express, and one that will grow the company's retail footprint to nearly 2,000 stores in 25 states, predominantly throughout the Northeast/New England and the Southeast.
The deal, for TBC's NTB Tire & Service Centers (392 stores) and Tire Kingdom Service Centers (203 stores), is expected to close in the coming weeks, TBC and Mavis Tire said in announcing the deal. Financial terms have as yet not been disclosed.
The deal will expand Mavis' market presence to three new states — Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia — and will expand its presence markedly in two other others, Maryland and Texas, where it has only a limited presence.
The addition of the TBC holdings also will triple Mavis' presence in Florida and double its footprint in North Carolina and South Carolina.
Mavis has been involved in six of the 10 largest mergers/acquisitions of all time in the U.S. retail tire/auto service sector, according to Tire Business research.
Collectively, these six — acquisitions of Somerset Tire Service, Kauffman Tire's retail assets and two deals with TBC, plus "mergers" with Express Oil Change/Tire Engineers and Town Fair Tire — represent nearly 1,200 points of sale.
The only single transaction that ranks larger than this latest Mavis/TBC deal would be Penske Corp.'s takeover of 860 Kmart auto centers in 1995.
That venture, however, lasted only seven years before Penske pulled the plug on the Penske Auto Centers business in early 2002.
Mavis' retail network of nearly 2,000 stores will put it comfortably ahead of No. 2 Monro Inc., with 1,299 stores, and Discount Tire/America's Tire, with 1,166 locations, the only other dealerships with more than 1,000 stores.
It's unclear, though, whether the enlarged Mavis retail holdings will nail down the No. 1 sales crown, held currently by Discount Tire/America's Tire, which reported $6.4 billion in revenue in 2021. Tire Business has estimated TBC's annual retail-related revenue at north of $2 billion, but Mavis Tire traditionally has not disclosed sales data.
Mavis' retail reach extends even further, however, through its Express Oil and Tuffy Tire franchising activities, which cover an estimated 250-plus retail points of sale. It also maintains a growing wholesale business.
