Daseke to repurchase founder’s stock for a total of $107.6 million

Daseke Inc (DSKE) said on Monday that it had entered into an agreement with company founder, Don R. Daseke, and his affiliates, to repurchase their total holdings – 17,932,725 shares, in the transportation solutions company at a purchase price of $6.00 per share.

This way the company will repurchase about 28.6% of its issued and outstanding common shares as of November 9th.

The total consideration for the repurchase stands at $107.6 million, Daseke said.

In exchange for the repurchased shares, Daseke Inc will pay $40.0 million with cash on hand and issue 67,597 shares of Series B Perpetual Redeemable Preferred Stock.

They will have an aggregate initial liquidation preference of $67.6 million and will be redeemable at any time at Daseke’s option for the original liquidation preference.

“Shortly after announcing our $40 million repurchase program, Mr. Daseke informed us of his desire to sell his holdings in the Company for estate planning purposes, retire from the Board and focus his efforts on his philanthropic interests,” Jonathan Shepko, Chief Executive Officer of Daseke, said in a press release.

“This provided us with a unique opportunity to repurchase a substantial portion of our outstanding shares on very friendly terms. Shifting capital earmarked for an open-market share buy-back to support this repurchase has put us in a great position to lock in what we believe to be an extremely attractive repurchase price in a single transaction, without straining our tradeable float. For the foreseeable future, our priority will now be continuing our trend of deleveraging our business,” the CEO added.