Mister Car Wash left the public market in May after Leonard Green and Partners bought the remaining minority stake in an all-cash merger that ended a five-year listing. The sponsor had owned a controlling position since its original investment more than a decade earlier, so the transaction was less a sale of the company than a cash-out of the public float. That structure is the whole story. A special committee of independent directors blessed the price, the controller delivered written consent, and unaffiliated holders never voted. The operating print that arrived on the same February morning showed a business that had just crossed the billion-dollar revenue mark and was still adding members. The debate is whether $7 a share was a fair exit from a compressed multiple or a cheap recapture of a subscription engine the public market had already given up on.
The cash-out sat at a stated premium to the ninety-day volume-weighted average through mid-February, yet it was a deep discount to the original listing price. Leonard Green opened talks lower and moved up across three revisions, which is the committee's evidence that it extracted something. Plaintiff firms later argued the opposite. A controller that can approve a sale to itself has every incentive to keep the price tight, and management rolled equity into the private company while the public was cashed out. The last fully public year still produced mid-single-digit comparable-store growth and an adjusted earnings measure that reached $345 million even as sale-leasebacks converted owned tunnels into rising rent. The membership club, cancelable monthly, already accounted for most wash sales.
The March quarter, the last complete public report, showed comps re-accelerating and membership climbing by more than two hundred thousand people. Adjusted operating profit outpaced revenue. Cash rebuilt from the year-end trough to $55 million, and greenfield openings slowed to a trickle while the merger sat in process. Trading stopped after the May close, with a last print a dime above the $7 merger price. For anyone still holding a residual claim, the live question is no longer multiple expansion. It is whether appraisal or fiduciary litigation can reopen a price that the controller already locked, or whether the private company simply compounds the membership base out of view.