Maxum Petroleum files for $400 million IPO

A Greenwich-based diesel-fuel distributor has filed for a $400 million initial public offering of stock to pay down debt following several acquisitions.

Maxum Petroleum Holdings Inc. buys and sells 1.4 billion gallons of diesel and 45 million gallons of industrial and automotive lubricants annually. It has 20,000 customers in the United States and Panama, with a Bridgeport fuel depot among six distribution installations in Connecticut. The company”™s four operating units employ 1,200 people today.

Maxum plans to trade its stock under the symbol MXP on the New York Stock Exchange.

Perot Bissell has been chief executive officer of Maxum for more than a year, having previously been a managing partner with Seattle-based Northwest Capital Appreciation Inc. In 2003, the private equity firm organized a buyout of Oklahoma-based Simons Petroleum, along with Waud Capital Partners LLC of Chicago and RBC Capital Partners, an affiliate of Royal Bank of Canada.

Since then, Maxum has added:

Ӣ Canyon State Oil

Ӣ General Petroleum

Ӣ Pecos

Ӣ Petroleum Products Inc.

For the first nine months of its fiscal year ending in June, Maxum had a $20 million profit on $2.7 billion in revenue. While that numbers it among the largest diesel distributors in the United States, Maxum is still a relatively small player in the overall U.S. petroleum distribution industry as a whole, which the U.S. Department of Energy pegs at $360 million in annual revenue.

Besides the cost savings it generates from bulk purchases, the company uses a proprietary software system to analyze optimal fuel prices and transportation costs from 425 supply “racks” nationally from which it procures fuel.

Besides paying down debt, the IPO will give Maxum liquid stock to help it snap up distribution depots and networks as they become available, as oil companies consolidate distribution in order to focus on exploration and production. In the past decade, the number of fuel distributors has been cut by more than 40 percent according to Petroleum Trends International Inc. of Metuchen, N.J., as major oil companies look to cut distribution costs.

The IPO is being underwritten by Bear Stearns & Co., Credit Suisse and UBS. It is being overseen by Michael Salbaing, Maxum”™s chief financial officer who until recently was CFO of Cenveo Inc., a Stamford-based company that is among the largest commercial printers in the United States.