No Changes Planned With Great Plains Sale

In an announcement last Tuesday, Great Plains Communications reported that it has entered into an agreement to be purchased by Grain Management, LLC.

Great Plains Communications is the largest privately-owned telecommunications provider in Nebraska. Great Plains CEO Todd Foje said a combination of many factors went into the decision to sell the company.

“First, there’s been a lot of merger and acquisition activity in our industry, and we knew there’d be good interest in possibly having a new shareholder and investor in our company,” said Foje. “Our business has performed really well. We have a great team of people, a supportive customer base, and we’ve been able to grow the business, so we felt like we were in a position of strength from a company standpoint.”

Grain Management, LLC (Grain) is a leading private equity firm focused on investments in the communications sector. Foje said they chose Grain for the purchase for multiple reasons, the first of which was that the firm focuses exclusively on investing in communications-related businesses.

“A second factor was the fact that they were willing to contribute additional financial resources and capital to the company to support some additional growth,” Foje said.

Amid concerns from current employers, Foje explained that another reason the company chose Grain was that the current workforce was going to stay in place and the business had more possibilities for growth.

“It’s business as usual for our current employees,” Foje reassured. “We expect stable employment for now, and over time, hope to grow employment as the business grows.”

Foje also explained that the current management team is staying in place as well. “Grain doesn’t have executives or management to put into a business. They partner with management to grow businesses is what their approach is, and so we’re partners in that respect.”

As far as Great Plains’ current customers, Foje does not anticipate any changes to prices or services offered. “Over time, any impacts will only be positive because Grain is actually taking an approach with us where we’ll actually have more money to invest in the business and in our network, benefitting customers.”

“We expect to continue to grow in our current markets,” Foje said about the company’s future plans. “One of our objectives is always keeping the rural parts of the state connected to the metro parts and the metro parts of the state to the rural parts. We’ll continue to invest in both of those and create growth. In addition to that, we’ll continue to acquire other communications businesses that we can combine with ours to become even bigger and better over time.”

Foje expects the transaction to be finalized in the fall, after being granted the proper regulatory approvals. Once the transaction is complete, the company’s headquarters will remain in Blair and the company will remain Great Plains Communications.