Building products distributor QXO reportedly makes play for Beacon Roofing

Beacon is reported to be the largest publicly-traded distributor of roofing materials and complementary building products in North America. Image: Adobe Stock

Reports in Factiva via the Wall Street Journal write that a deal could be concluded before the end of the year.

Beacon is the largest publicly-traded distributor of roofing materials and complementary building products in North America, according to the company’s website.

QXO, which is also based in the US, has a market value of about $6.5 billion. It is headed by Brad Jacobs, who has built multibillion-dollar companies in logistics and other sectors through acquisitions.

In 1997, Jacobs formed United Rentals, and became the new company’s chairman and chief executive officer. United Rentals is now the largest equipment rental company in the world and initially grew through a strategy of consolidating equipment rental dealers in North America.

Click here for a ranking of the world’s 100 biggest equipment rental companies.

About a year ago, Jacobs and others agreed to invest roughly $1 billion into a small, publicly traded software company –SilverSun Technologies – and renamed it QXO.

The company has since raised more than $4 billion in two private placements from investors including President-elect Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who sits on QXO’s board.

QXO named Ihsan Essaid, former global head of mergers and acquisitions at Barclays, as its chief financial officer, and more recently named an artificial-intelligence chief.

Jacobs previously built transportation-and-logistics company XPO through a series of more than a dozen deals before splitting it into three separate publicly traded companies: XPO, RXO and GXO.