We’re four years removed from the summer of 2021 when the grill industry was red hot and multiple companies went public. One of those companies was Traeger, who led the charge on pellet grills and has become synonymous with them.

With the crash of the grill industry a year later and now pressure from tariffs and a stretched consumer, it feels like 2021 was a distant memory. As a result, stock prices across the board for grill companies have taken a hit. Traeger’s stock had a high of around $30 shortly after their IPO, and now it sits at under $2.

One idea that has been floated by Brian McNamara, equity analyst at Canaccord is that Traeger could be taken private. He wrote about it previously, and that idea was only reinforced when Traeger CEO, Jeremy Andrus, purchased an additional 727,000 shares of Traeger stock on June 6th.

That purchase gives him total ownership of Traeger of around 13.1%. He also notes that Traeger’s top four shareholders own about 69% of the company.

The grill industry is continually looking for a bottom and in the meantime Traeger is an inexpensive company. It has an Enterprise Value (EV) of $244 million, which is the theoretical cost to buy the company from summing its stock and debt. Compared to it’s earnings, Traeger has an EV/EBITDA of only 3.5x, which is a value proxy often used to benchmark private companies.

Traeger is the most well known brand in pellet grills with exceptional enthusiasm from owners. Like other grill companies though, they are a victim of the macroenvironment.

The macro pressures on the consumer will dissipate like they have through history, increasing the value of the company. Plus, there’s the likely possibility that tariffs are decreased within the next four years, which will cause value to sharply increase. Lowered cash flow from tariffs is an artificial constraint on the business.

With how top heavy ownership of Traeger is, it seems like a smart value play would be to take the company private. A 3.5x multiple on earnings doesn’t seem to reflect the value of the company.

There could be quite a bit of value unlocked for the ownership group to take the company private. It would lessen the administrative burden in the near term while cash is at a premium, and allow focus to be put on a more long-term strategy, rather than quarter to quarter. Once the macro environment improves and tariffs are decreased, it’s highly likely the company could be recapitalized at a significantly higher multiple.

Traeger wouldn’t be the first to do in the industry either. We saw Weber IPO then go private through their ownership, only to end up merging with Blackstone.