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Blackstone is poised to turn out to be the bulk proprietor of Jersey Mike’s by an acquisition that the funding agency introduced on Tuesday.
The funding agency, run by CEO Stephen Schwarzman, will maintain a majority possession stake in Jersey Mike’s by its “most recent flagship private equity vehicle and other funds it manages upon the expected completion of the purchase of the sandwich chain early next year, Blackstone said.
BLACKSTONE BUYS JERSEY MIKE’S SANDWICH CHAIN
While the popular Jersey Mike’s is the latest company for Blackstone to pursue, it is far from the first. The firm, a prolific dealmaker, counts Ancestry.com, Bumble and Rover among some of its many other investments over the years.
FOX Business reached out to Blackstone for comment about the three companies.
Ancestry
An attendee views an Ancestry.com Inc. DNA kit at the 2017 RootsTech Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S., on Thursday, Feb. 9, 2017. The four-day conference is a genealogy event focused on discovering and sharing family connections across genera (George Frey/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)
Blackstone-managed private equity (PE) funds brought Ancestry into the investment firm’s portfolio in 2020 through a transaction that gave the popular genealogy website an enterprise value of $4.7 billion. They bought it from Silver Lake, GIC, Spectrum, Permira and others, with Blackstone saying at the time GIC would keep a “vital minority stake.”
“We imagine Ancestry has vital runway for additional development as folks of all ages and backgrounds turn out to be more and more involved in studying extra about their household histories and themselves,” Blackstone said when it unveiled the acquisition. “We look ahead to investing behind additional information, performance, and product improvement throughout Ancestry’s market main platform to proceed to offer a differentiated service.”
Ancestry has DNA information from over 25 million people, according to its website. Its paying subscriber count is over 3 million.
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Bumble 
UKRAINE – 2021/04/11: In this photo illustration the Bumble logo of an US social media company is seen on a smartphone and a pc screen. (Photo Illustration by Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images) (Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images / Getty Images)
Bumble Inc. inked a deal for Blackstone to buy a majority stake in the dating app company in 2019, when it was still called MagicLab and about two years before it went public.
A proxy statement filed by Bumble earlier this year showed the investment firm owned 23.9% of Bumble’s Class A common stock and 13.9% of its common units as of early March, while Bumble Executive Chair Whitney Wolfe Herd held less than 1% of Class A shares and 12.9% of common units. In December 2023 and March 2024, Bumble bought back some equity interests from Blackstone as part of a repurchase program.
The dating app company, which owns Bumble, Bumble for Friends, Badoo, Fruitz and Official, said earlier this month it saw $273.6 million in total revenues in the third-quarter, marking a less than 1% decrease from the same period the prior year. Its quarterly net loss, meanwhile, was $849.26 million.
The company brought a slew of new features to its namesake app earlier in the year.
“Our work is targeted on strengthening our ecosystem, rolling out a rebalanced advertising and marketing method to drive high-quality consumer development, attaining a gradual cadence of product releases, and evolving our income technique to higher align with buyer worth,” CEO Lidiane Jones said, adding that it “will take time.”
Bumble shares have posted an over 46% drop in the past 12 months.
Rover 
The Rover application for download in the Apple App Store on a smartphone arranged in Dobbs Ferry, New York, U.S., on Thursday, April 1, 2021. One of the signs that Covid-19’s hold over Americans’ lives is easing is that pet owners are now spending a (Tiffany Hagler-Geard/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)
The closing of Blackstone’s acquisition of pet care services platform Rover occurred in February of this year. It turned Rover, which has kept its name and branding, back into a private company.
The deal was worth about $2.3 billion and all-cash, according to Blackstone.
BLACKSTONE PAYING $2.3B BILLION TO ACQUIRE ROVER
In a quarterly earnings report that Rover filed early November 2023 prior to the announcement of its deal with Blackstone, the platform had said it generated $165.85 million in revenue over the first three quarters of that year, a nearly 35.9% year-over-year increase. It had also said it expected to see revenue of $64-66 million in 2023’s final quarter, according to the filing.
More than 2 million pet owners have used Rover for pet care services, per the platform.
Investments in other well-known companies
Blackstone owns or has a stake in other well-known companies.
For example, it closed its acquisition of Tropical Smoothie Cafe, a fast-growing chain that offers smoothies and other food, earlier this year. It also has majority ownership stakes in Spanx and Supergoop.
The Blackstone headquarters in New York, US, on Monday, Jan. 8, 2024. Blackstone Inc. launched earnings figures on January 25. Photographer: Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg through Getty Photos (Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg through Getty Photos / Getty Photos)
Blackstone reported having 85 portfolio firms as of the tip of June and company personal fairness belongings below administration totalling $152 billion as of late September.
Total, the corporate manages greater than $1.1 trillion in varied belongings. Its market capitalization hovered round $224.27 billion as of Tuesday night.
