Always up for a challenge
Rod Marlin’s idea of fun is building successful companies
Many execs dream of striking it rich, so they can spend the rest of their days soaking up the sun in some tropical paradise.
Rare is the individual who has plenty of money to do just that, but prefers to roll up his sleeves and go to work every day instead. Meet Rod Marlin. Nearly 20 years after the founder of Marlin Travel — once Canada’s largest travel agency — sold his business to Britain’s Thomas Cook Group for more than $20 million, he still loves the challenge of building successful companies.
“When I sold Marlin Travel in 1993 I tried retiring and it really didn’t sit very well,” says Marlin, now in his mid-60s and chairman and CEO of Spruce Grovebased Entrec Transportation, a Venture Exchange-listed oilfield transport services firm.
“When you can do whatever you want to do as much as you want to do it, you find out it’s not as much fun as you thought it might be. Besides, I was only 45 then, so I was too young to retire,” he laughs.
Marlin satisfied his itch to get back to work in 1994, when he and a partner acquired Edmonton-based Eveready Industrial, which did maintenance work for pulp and paper mills, mining operations, refineries and petrochemical plants.
Within a decade, Eveready had grown to 450 employees at 26 locations. By the time it was sold in 2009 to U.S. giant Clean Harbors Inc. for more than $450 million, Eveready had 2,100 employees at 79 locations nationwide.
“Selling out really wasn’t part of our plan with either company,” says Marlin.
“Marlin Travel was around for 25 years, but Thomas Cook came along and made us an offer we couldn’t refuse. The same thing happened with Eveready. It really wasn’t for sale, but Clean Harbors came along and paid us a 217 per cent premium to market,” he says.
“I’m still on their board and it’s been a terrific thing for them. Their stock has nearly tripled since we did that deal.”
After the Eveready deal closed, Marlin, his colleagues and some former shareholders didn’t take long to start looking for their next corporate adventure.
“We created a little JCP (junior capital pool) company on the Venture Exchange, and Jason Vandenberg (Eveready’s former CFO, now the CFO of Entrec) and I spent 13 or 14 months looking at 40 or 50 different opportunities, trying to find a company we thought we could grow into a sizable enterprise,” he recalls.
Eventually, thanks to a tip in December 2010 from John Stevens, another former Eveready exec, they stumbled on Entrec Transportation, a division of Flint Energy.
Entrec was ultimately acquired in May 2011, and the former JCP entity — known as EIS Capital — was soon rebranded under Entrec’s banner as a regular publicly traded company.
Several acquisitions and equity offerings later, Entrec has evolved into a fast-growing mid-tier player in Alberta’s oilfield transportation sector, specializing in heavy hauling of oversized cargo — such as oilsands modules — as well as operating large and small industrial cranes.
In mid-march, Entrec announced its largest acquisition yet, a $56.3 million cash-and-share deal to acquire Nisku-based Mains Group, which operates a fleet of 60 cranes, 40 heavy haul trailers and other oilfield transportation equipment.
Once the Mains deal and a related equity financing closes, Entrec expects its annual revenues for 2012 to ramp up to between $65 million and $70 million, and the company’s market cap to top the $100 million mark.
Half a dozen equity analysts are already covering Entrec’s activities, and Marlin and Stevens — who has since joined the company as president and COO — have already done investor roadshows in an effort to market the company’s shares to a broader audience.
With the oilsands on the cusp of what’s expected to be another long growth cycle, Stevens says Entrec should generate annual revenues of about $500 million within three to five years.
For Marlin, that means he won’t likely be spending a lot of time watching his show-jumping horses, or sunning it up in the winter in Arizona or California. But he seems OK with that.
“The reason that I’m Entrec’s chairman and John is the president is that I’m sort of here part time. At least, that was the theory,” he says.
“So if I wasn’t here at seven in the morning I didn’t have to feel guilty. And if I wanted to go south for a couple of months in the winter, I wouldn’t feel guilty. But I’m having fun here, so I haven’t been away very much.”