C&S WHOLESALE GROCERS PURCHASES PIGGLY WIGGLY

C&S Wholesale Grocers, one of the largest grocery distributors/wholesalers in the U.S., is buying Sheboygan, Wisc.- based Piggly Wiggly Midwest.

Based in Keene, NH, since 2004, C&S will operate 11 Piggly Wiggly Midwest corporate stores and service and supply 14 Butera Market Stores around Chicago. C&S will also service and supply 84 Piggly Wiggly franchise stores after the acquisition. The sale, which was announced July 15, is anticipated to close at the end of the month.

Terms of the agreement were not disclosed. C&S and Piggly Wiggly Midwest are each privately held.

C&S will bring considerable buying power to Piggly Wiggly franchises, said Pat Fox, chairman of the employee-owned Fox Bros., a Piggly Wiggly chain of stores in Milwaukee’s suburbs.

Piggly Wiggly Midwest, which has been headquartered in Sheboygan since 1911, has two distribution centers there and operates a distribution center in Milwaukee.

The acquisition expands C&S service to more stores that operate under the Piggly Wiggly banner. As of the end of 2020, C&S serviced a total of 55 Piggly Wiggly locations in South Carolina and southeast Georgia.

In total, C&S supplies more than 7,700 independent supermarkets, chain stores, military bases and institutions with 137,000 different products.

CDM FITNESS HOLDINGS ACQUIRES 11 PLANET FITNESS CLUBS

Planet Fitness franchisee CDM Fitness Holdings has acquired 11 Planet Fitness clubs from Northshore Fit LLC, including 10 locations in northern Massachusetts and one location in southern New Hampshire.

This is the second acquisition for CDM, which was founded in 2002 with its first fitness club in Franklin, Mass. As New England’s largest franchisee, CDM is continuing to grow. The transaction strategically expands CDM’s growing footprint to cover new parts of the region, which now includes 50 Planet Fitness clubs with exclusive rights to develop 20-plus additional clubs in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

CDM is a portfolio company of SBJ Capital, a San Francisco Bay Area-based private investment firm.

The seller, NSF, opened its first Planet Fitness club in 2009 and, over the next 12 years, expanded to 11 clubs across northeastern Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

In connection with the transaction, North Point acted as the exclusive financial advisor to NSF and McLane Middleton served as their legal advisor. O’Melveny & Myers LLP provided legal advice to CDM.

ALLEGRO MICROSYSTEMS FORESEES GROWTH ACROSS SECTORS

Manchester-based Allegro MicroSystems, a maker of integrated sensors and power circuits, is seeing strong demand from its industrial and automotive customers that will continue into the next couple of quarters.

In the company’s fourth quarter reporting for its fiscal year ending March 2021, industrial revenue was up 23% for the year, “well ahead of expectations,” said CEO Ravi Vig, and accounting for 34% of the company’s revenue for the year.

Magnetic sensor integrated circuits and power integrated circuits performed substantially well, particularly due to customer demand shifting from cars to light truck and SUV models, which require a higher content of adaptive cruise control, automatic emergency brake assist, lane centering and other features.

The company also saw a faster than expected uptick in demand from data centers for its embedded fan controllers to replace more complex solutions.

There is also increased demand in warehouse robotics and security and surveillance in factories.

“And we had record demand for green energy applications, particularly solar, as well as new business and EV charging stations,” said Vig. “Looking into fiscal ‘22, we expect all of our major industrial end markets to grow.”