Golf's Latest $500 Million Company
Foresight Sports was acquired for $474 million by Vista Outdoor.
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Hey Golfers -
Indoor golf is booming.
In September, Vista Outdoor announced they were acquiring Foresight Sports for $474 million. Foresight Sports is a leader in the popular indoor golf segment; they break down their products into four major categories.
Launch Monitors
Simulators
Software
Smart Carts
If you are wondering who Vista Outdoor is, don’t worry, I was too. Vista Outdoor is a publically traded company on the New York Stock Exchange, trading under the stock symbol $VSTO with a current market cap of $2.4 billion. Vista Outdoor has over 30 brands in its portfolio broken into two major segments.
Shooting Sports
Outdoor Products
Interestingly enough, Vista Outdoor owns the Bushnell Golf brand. Vista Outdoor held an investor day in May of 2021; I reviewed the slide deck focused on Bushnell Golf and found interesting pieces of information.
Golf Industry is valued at $8+ billion
Golf EMDs is valued at $200+ million
24 million golfing enthusiasts, with 9 million being avid golfers
Golf rounds increased 14% year over year
Bushnell Golf owns the market share
In July, Bushnell Golf announced they would be releasing a launch monitor in partnership with Foresight Sports. This partnership was a crucial driver in the acquisition, and the synergies are apparent for both organizations.
For the calendar year 2021, it is expected that Foresight Sports will do $100 million in net sales and $50 million in adjusted EBITDA, a 9.5 EBITDA multiple on the Vista Ourdoor purchase price.
Let’s get into Foresight Sports.
They were founded in 2009 in San Diego, California. Foresight Sports initially focused on developing the best line of launch monitors in the market utilizing optical ball flight analysis. Foresight Sports currently offers several launch monitor products.
GCHawk ($20,000)
GCQuad ($11,000)
GC3 ($6,999)
GC2 + HMT
GC2
Foresight Golf has a wide range of simulator products.
Albatross Package ($33,995)
Eagle Plus Package ($26,000)
Par Package ($16,949)
Birdie Package ($14,995)
Foresight Sports is a popular choice for Tour players, retailers, and coaches around the world. They have over 15,000 GC launch monitors and golf simulators in use globally.
Here is the crazy thing, Foresight Sports is just one of several recent announcements in the indoor golf space.
Full Swing was acquired for $160 million by Bruin Capital earlier this year. I broke down the acquisition in a previous Perfect Putt newsletter. You can read it here.
Troon Golf recently announced their partnership with Golfzon to open three ZSTRICT indoor entertainment facilities.
Seemingly every week, a local simulator is announced in a small to medium-sized market. We saw announcements from Worcester, Brentwood, Clifton Park, Minot in the last couple of weeks. Local simulator businesses are popping up everywhere.
According to a recent industry report, the global Indoor Golf Equipment market was valued at $722 million in 2020. The report expects the space to grow at a 10% Compound Average Growth Rate (CAGR) until 2027. The Indoor Golf Equipment market will nearly double at that rate, reaching $1.4 billion. For reference, the global Golf Market was valued at $8.5 billion with a 1.4% CAGR until 2026.
The Indoor Golf Equipment market is less than 10% of the total Golf Market but growing seven times faster. Remarkable.
Have yourself a Monday, talk to you next week!
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It's really interested to see larger companies opening indoor facilities. There's a pretty strict revenue cap based on how many simulators you have in one facility, so I wonder where they see the value.