Mission-Critical Services Provider Exigent Launches With Its First Acquisition, American Combustion Industries Inc.

Private investment firm The Stephens Group, LLC (“The Stephens Group”) announced that it has made a minority investment in the formation of Exigent (or the “Company”), which will provide a variety of mission-critical repair, maintenance, and replacement services to large facility operations for education, healthcare, industrial, government, and commercial customers. The investment was made in support of Huron Capital’s (“Huron”) controlling investment in the company. Exigent will focus on highly technical mechanical services in the built environment such as HVAC, plumbing, power, and energy efficiency.

Exigent’s launch coincides with the Company’s first partnership, American Combustion Industries Inc. (“ACI”), a critical system repair and maintenance business located in Glenn Dale, Maryland, which focuses on boilers, chillers, plumbing and other complex, technical services within a wide range of facilities. ACI’s owner and President Tim Kirlin will maintain an equity stake in Exigent and will join the Company’s growing executive team.

ACI’s skilled union technicians and its model for providing high-quality, reliable and largely non-discretionary services focused on complex systems are some of the core attributes Exigent will look for in future business partners.

“Tim and the ACI team have a built a business known not only for its critical repair and maintenance services offering, but also for the service-first mentality it provides to its customers. We think very highly of Huron and their deep experience and expertise in the facilities services space. We are looking forward to working together to grow the Exigent platform,” said Grant Jones, a Managing Director at The Stephens Group. Allie Laborde, a Principal at The Stephens Group, added, “for nearly 90 years, partnership has been a key principle of the Stephens family’s investment strategy, and this extends not only to entrepreneurs and management teams but also to our peers. We are excited to partner with the Huron and ACI teams to build a market leader in the mechanical services space.”

About The Stephens Group, LLC

The Stephens Group, LLC is a private investment firm that partners with talented management teams to help build valuable businesses. Backed by the resources of the Witt Stephens and Elizabeth Campbell families, the firm combines the operational expertise of a private equity firm with the flexibility provided by long-term capital. With nearly $2 billion of private equity assets under management, the firm has a long history of providing informed, sophisticated expertise and working with owners and managers to help them successfully achieve their strategic visions and build long-term value. Since 2006, The Stephens Group has invested in 49 companies, targeting investments in industries across the U.S., including industrial and commercial products and services, specialty distribution, B2B food, technology infrastructure and tech-enabled services.

About ACI

Founded in 1976, ACI is a union mechanical service company serving customers throughout Washington D.C., Maryland, and Northern Virginia. The Company provides service, repair, maintenance, and retrofit installation of boilers, chillers, cooling towers, split systems, pumps and piping.

About Huron Capital

Huron Capital brings a people-first and thematic approach to private equity investing in secularly relevant and fragmented sectors of the North American services industry. Huron partners with entrepreneurs and management teams, empowering their companies to new levels of excellence. The firm provide resources to help companies grow by professionalizing operations, improving service offerings, executing M&A strategies and accessing new markets.

Founded in Detroit in 1999, Huron Capital has managed over $1.8 billion on behalf of a global institutional investor base and employs a repeatable playbook to drive thoughtful value creation, showcased in over 250 acquisitions since the firm’s inception.

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