CHALK TALK. “I don’t know where I’m going,” O. Roy Chalk once said. “I just know I’m going.”
Chalk’s still going as he nears 80, this time into the off-site storage business. His latest venture, File-A-Way Storage, will utilize something he’s got plenty of: empty space.
As the chairman and CEO of D.C. Trading & Development Corporation, File-A-Way’s parent company, Chalk controls sundry garages, car barns, and other properties left over from his days as the last private owner of Washington’s transit system. If all goes well, the new business will help fill up two of them: the newly renovated Car Barn at 3000 M Street, N.W., which has been D.C. Trading & Development’s headquarters, and the old Navy Yard Car Barn, which covers an entire square block at 5th and M Streets, S.E.
You name it, apparently, and File-A-Wav will store it — and, when the need arises, retrieve it (with one-hour rush service). “We can meet and beat any of our competitors’ prices,” says the company’s marketing director, Jean Adams, a former syndicated newspaper columnist. The company will also have “two of the best bank-type vaults on the East Coast,” Adams says, for safeguarding such items as X-rays, microfilm and microfiche, and computer disks and tapes.
Over the years D.C. Trading & Development has been a kind of holding company for an eclectic assortment of Chalk’s enterprises, including a travel agency, a now-inactive airline company, an effort to resuscitate an old gold mine in California’s Sierra Madre mountains, and, most recently, a futuristic machine-tool shop that turns out spare parts for the Defense Department and for other clients. But a “computerized record archives,” as File-A-Way bills itself, may be Chalk’s best idea yet. “He’s staying very, very close to it,” Adams says. “It’s a shining and rising star for him.”
D.C. Trading & Development needs one. Chalk’s company has been losing money in a big way lately. Last year, after stockholders’ equity sank below the minimum required by the National Association of Securities Dealers, the company stopped trading on NASDAQ.
BUT WE MAKE UP FOR IT IN VOLUME. Last November, when Emhart Corporation’s friendly takeover bid put McLean-based Planning Research Corporation in play for a month, the margins were too thin to attract most M&A speculators. But one New Jersey-based investment firm, Easton & Company, went after a big piece of the action anyway. It plunked down $11,430,263 for 366,300 shares of PRC’s stock — a 5.4 percent chunk of the company — and a little while later tendered them to Emhart for $31.50 apiece in cash.
Easton’s profit per share works out to a puny 29.5 cents, which only goes to show that it takes money to make money. Easton’s total take from its big play was $108,187.
ONE GOOD TURN DESERVES ANOTHER. An excerpt from Maricorp’s $96 million tender offer for Baltimore-based Fair Lanes, the nation’s largest independent chain of bowling centers: “The Purchaser is wholly owned by Delcorp, a Delaware corporation, which in turn is wholly owned by Northern Retail Corporation, a Delaware corporation, which in turn is wholly owned by Northern Pacific Corporation, a Delaware corporation, which in turn is wholly owned by Northern Holdings Corporation, a Delaware corporation, which in turn is owned 90 percent and controlled by the Trump Capital Corporation, a Delaware corporation.”
Fair Lanes, which has been publicly owned for 27 years, agreed to be taken private after receiving an unsolicited buyout offer from Trump Group of New York (investors Julius and Eddie, not real estate magnate Donald). The merger transfers the ownership of Fair Lanes to an investor group that includes its president, Walter Hall, other senior management, and Northern Pacific Corporation, which, as you know, is . . .
MAYBE BARNUM WAS RIGHT AFTER ALL. Elliot Srebrenick and Arthur Taylor apparently liked Real Rich ice cream so much that they bought the company. Now they want you to buy it.
Srebrenick and Taylor are trying to raise $1.2 million through a public stock offering in Real Rich Systems, a Washington-based franchisor of ice cream stores. The two investors from Phoenix acquired Real Rich last June from Sheldon Fischer, the operator of Washington’s Yummy Yogurt chain, on bargain-basement terms: $30,000 down, a promise of $270,000 more from the proceeds of the public offering, stock, and $500 for each future franchise.
In Real Rich’s case, however, going public may not be easy. Its new owners apparently haven’t been able to find an underwriter (or, for that matter, even a market-maker). Although Real Rich has 14 franchisees (all of which are in the Washington area), its sales declined for two years in a row after the flagship store lost its lease at Tysons Corner mall. The company’s profit in 1986 was only $2,430.
Then there’s the delicate issue of “dilution.” If investors actually buy four million shares of Real Rich stock at 30 cents a pop, they’ll wind up paying $1.2 million for roughly 40 percent of the company. Management, of course, gets a sweeter deal: 10 million shares, or 60 percent of the company, for just $40,000.
Under the Counter
CHALK TALK. “I don’t know where I’m going,” O. Roy Chalk once said. “I just know I’m going.”
Chalk’s still going as he nears 80, this time into the off-site storage business. His latest venture, File-A-Way Storage, will utilize something he’s got plenty of: empty space.
As the chairman and CEO of D.C. Trading & Development Corporation, File-A-Way’s parent company, Chalk controls sundry garages, car barns, and other properties left over from his days as the last private owner of Washington’s transit system. If all goes well, the new business will help fill up two of them: the newly renovated Car Barn at 3000 M Street, N.W., which has been D.C. Trading & Development’s headquarters, and the old Navy Yard Car Barn, which covers an entire square block at 5th and M Streets, S.E.
You name it, apparently, and File-A-Wav will store it — and, when the need arises, retrieve it (with one-hour rush service). “We can meet and beat any of our competitors’ prices,” says the company’s marketing director, Jean Adams, a former syndicated newspaper columnist. The company will also have “two of the best bank-type vaults on the East Coast,” Adams says, for safeguarding such items as X-rays, microfilm and microfiche, and computer disks and tapes.
Over the years D.C. Trading & Development has been a kind of holding company for an eclectic assortment of Chalk’s enterprises, including a travel agency, a now-inactive airline company, an effort to resuscitate an old gold mine in California’s Sierra Madre mountains, and, most recently, a futuristic machine-tool shop that turns out spare parts for the Defense Department and for other clients. But a “computerized record archives,” as File-A-Way bills itself, may be Chalk’s best idea yet. “He’s staying very, very close to it,” Adams says. “It’s a shining and rising star for him.”
D.C. Trading & Development needs one. Chalk’s company has been losing money in a big way lately. Last year, after stockholders’ equity sank below the minimum required by the National Association of Securities Dealers, the company stopped trading on NASDAQ.
BUT WE MAKE UP FOR IT IN VOLUME. Last November, when Emhart Corporation’s friendly takeover bid put McLean-based Planning Research Corporation in play for a month, the margins were too thin to attract most M&A speculators. But one New Jersey-based investment firm, Easton & Company, went after a big piece of the action anyway. It plunked down $11,430,263 for 366,300 shares of PRC’s stock — a 5.4 percent chunk of the company — and a little while later tendered them to Emhart for $31.50 apiece in cash.
Easton’s profit per share works out to a puny 29.5 cents, which only goes to show that it takes money to make money. Easton’s total take from its big play was $108,187.
ONE GOOD TURN DESERVES ANOTHER. An excerpt from Maricorp’s $96 million tender offer for Baltimore-based Fair Lanes, the nation’s largest independent chain of bowling centers: “The Purchaser is wholly owned by Delcorp, a Delaware corporation, which in turn is wholly owned by Northern Retail Corporation, a Delaware corporation, which in turn is wholly owned by Northern Pacific Corporation, a Delaware corporation, which in turn is wholly owned by Northern Holdings Corporation, a Delaware corporation, which in turn is owned 90 percent and controlled by the Trump Capital Corporation, a Delaware corporation.”
Fair Lanes, which has been publicly owned for 27 years, agreed to be taken private after receiving an unsolicited buyout offer from Trump Group of New York (investors Julius and Eddie, not real estate magnate Donald). The merger transfers the ownership of Fair Lanes to an investor group that includes its president, Walter Hall, other senior management, and Northern Pacific Corporation, which, as you know, is . . .
MAYBE BARNUM WAS RIGHT AFTER ALL. Elliot Srebrenick and Arthur Taylor apparently liked Real Rich ice cream so much that they bought the company. Now they want you to buy it.
Srebrenick and Taylor are trying to raise $1.2 million through a public stock offering in Real Rich Systems, a Washington-based franchisor of ice cream stores. The two investors from Phoenix acquired Real Rich last June from Sheldon Fischer, the operator of Washington’s Yummy Yogurt chain, on bargain-basement terms: $30,000 down, a promise of $270,000 more from the proceeds of the public offering, stock, and $500 for each future franchise.
In Real Rich’s case, however, going public may not be easy. Its new owners apparently haven’t been able to find an underwriter (or, for that matter, even a market-maker). Although Real Rich has 14 franchisees (all of which are in the Washington area), its sales declined for two years in a row after the flagship store lost its lease at Tysons Corner mall. The company’s profit in 1986 was only $2,430.
Then there’s the delicate issue of “dilution.” If investors actually buy four million shares of Real Rich stock at 30 cents a pop, they’ll wind up paying $1.2 million for roughly 40 percent of the company. Management, of course, gets a sweeter deal: 10 million shares, or 60 percent of the company, for just $40,000.
Arthur Taylor D.C. Trading & Development Company Delcorp Easton & Company Elliot Srebrenick Emhart Corporation Fair Lanes File-A-Way Storage Jean Adams Maricorp Northern Holdings Corporation Northern Pacific Corporation Northern Retail Corporation O. Roy Chalk Planning Research Corporation Real Rich Sheldon Fischer Trump Capital Corporation Trump Group Walter Hall Yummy Yogurt