After KKR acquired Geostabilization International (“GSI” or “the Company”) in 2018, KKR and GSI worked together to bring the company to the next level by investing heavily in GSI’s service breadth and capabilities, business infrastructure, sales and customer service, and, most importantly, employees. From the beginning, KKR supported GSI in implementing a broad-based employee ownership and alignment program to increase worker engagement and allow all employees the opportunity to participate in the benefits of an ownership culture.

Throughout the six-year period as a KKR portfolio company, GSI’s employee-owners leaned into this broad-based ownership program and drove significant growth at the Company, helping to nearly triple both revenue and profits. GSI also significantly enhanced worker safety, increased its rate of delivery for customers and expanded its family of brands and services, including in complementary roadway safety services.

In October of 2024, KKR announced the sale of GSI to Leonard Green & Partners, which delivered a return of five times the original equity invested by KKR. As a result of the transaction, all of GSI’s more than 900 employees, including 550 field service colleagues, earned cash payouts on their ownership stakes in the company. The payouts ranged from three months to over three years of annual pay, with longest-tenured hourly employees receiving at least $325,000 in proceeds.

In this video, GSI CEO Dominic Ivankovich and members of the KKR team discuss GSI’s journey with KKR and what the sale means for the entire GSI team. Several employees also share their immediate reactions to the news.

Since 2011, we have supported companies in implementing broad-based employee ownership programs throughout our portfolio, and in 2022, KKR committed to deploying the ownership model in all new control investments across the entire Americas Private Equity platform. To date, more than 55 KKR portfolio companies have awarded billions of dollars in equity to over 120,000 non-senior management employees. KKR is also a founding partner of the cross-sector initiative Ownership Works, a nonprofit on a mission to increase prosperity by developing and implementing broad-based employee ownership programs.