John Scofield has been a TAB member since 2006, when he joined as CEO of El Lago Foods.   He built the company into a highly profitable enterprise and sold it last year.  John is now in the process of building another success story…

Learn About Scofield Construction Services, LLC

New owner has big plans for specialty contrator servicing the pool industry and others

Austin Business Journal - by Laura Hipp ABJ Staff

John Scofield has traded tortillas for pools.

The Austin businessman, who owned East Austin tortilla and chip maker SG Mexican Foods  (El Lago brand) , recently bought Cen-Tex Plaster Inc., a 15-year-old pool company n Leander.

His Scofield Construction Services LLC, also acquired sister companies Cen-Tex Gunite Inc. and Mobile-Crete Inc. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“Our plan is to grow across the board,” says Scofield, who bought the business with his wife, Holly.

They plan to add customers through new commercial and residential  construction projects, advertising and expanding the reach of Mobile-Crete, the ready-mix concrete division.

Today, Cen-Tex employs roughly 100 workers, who gunite and plaster pools, pour ready-mix concrete for decks, driveways, sidewalks and other projects in a 20-county area. Through their crews they  can finish five to seven pools daily during the spring and summer  — the peak season.

Austin investment bank Focus Strategies LLC facilitated the acquisition.

Principal Lathrop Smith says Focus is seeing a “reasonable amount” of recapitalization and sales of companies with revenue from $5 million to $75 million in light of the economic downturn.

Debt financing among mid-market businesses has not contracted as much as the large deals, he says.

“The Texas economy has held up better than the national economy,” Smith says. “With capital gains rates currently at an all-time low and the healthy appetite of private equity investors, now is an attractive time for companies to conduct transactions.”

Scofield describes the trio of companies as a hidden treasure whose possibilities have not been fully realized. He declined to discuss revenue.

Cen-Tex renovates existing homeowners’ pools and gunites and plasters  pools as a subcontractor for commercial and government projects.

Scofield wants to be position to increase Cen-Tex’s presence in home construction as the housing market stabilizes in Central Texas. Its limited participation in new home construction helped Cen-Tex avoid effects of the credit crunch.

“Our customers and Cen-Tex are still doing very well,” he says.

Pool construction divisions involving plaster and gunite, a cement-based material, generate most of Cen-Tex’s revenue, but Scofield plans to build upon that and boost the promotion of Mobile-Crete’s many services .

Mobile-Crete recently reached an agreement with a South Austin materials supplier to refill trucks, he says. That will allow further expansion into Hays County with the trucks traveling to the new site to reload materials rather than to Leander.

“That reloading opens up the market to do business more rapidly in South Austin and North Hays County,” he says.