Volume 45, Number 27 $1.50 February 15-21, 2016www.slenterprise.com

OF NOTE

Trying to stop the bleeding Amid warnings that fourth quarter earnings will come in worse than expected, Sears Holdings Corp. will accelerate the closing of up to 50 Sears and Kmart stores previ-ously tabbed for shuttering. That includes the Kmart in North Logan which has already begun its liqui-dation sales. The Kmart in Woods Cross closed last year.Industry News Briefspages 6 & 8

Business Calendarpage 9

Real Estate Sectionpages 18-19

Sheena SteedmanThe Enterprise

Brice WallaceThe Enterprise

see SIC pg. 4

see GOED pg. 4

Sorenson Impact Center students visiting India worked with a company providing small-business loans to the women shown here who produce fi ber wares that are sold in design stores in the U.S. and Europe, providing for a monthly income increase of 30 percent to 40 percent. SIC photo.

Contrary to popular perception, it’s possible to be socially and environmentally conscientious and still turn a significant profit for investors. University of Utah students at the Sorenson Impact Center are proving just that. Founded in 2013 by local entrepre-neur, philanthropist and investor James Lee Sorenson, the Sorenson Impact Center (SIC) provides a hands-on education to its students as it affords them the opportu-

nity to act as management consultants and investment bankers to high-level investors in order to promote global impact invest-ing. The project was previously known as the James Lee Sorenson Center for Global Impact Investing. Global impact investing is defined as infusing capital into investment funds, companies and organizations that are mak-ing social and environmental impacts while still maintaining the intention of making a return on the investment.

Profits, social conscience fit together U's Sorenson center

Oil prices, cash shortage force oil sands slowdown A combination of low oil prices and a lack of operating capital has forced the Canadian company developing oil sands in Utah to slow the construction of its opera-tion in the Book Cliffs area southeast of Salt Lake City. Calgary-based U.S. Oil Sands Inc. also said that the low-price environ-ment has caused two of its prime contractors to cease operations in the state. “The oil industry is facing one of the most challenging environments it’s ever seen and it is prudent for us to adjust our construction plan accordingly,” said U.S. Oil Sands CEO Cameron Todd. He said that the cutbacks are designed for a fast restart should conditions change. “The company’s actions today help ensure U.S. Oil Sands will be a future industry leader,” Todd’s statement said. The company said that the action comes after a detailed review of its PR Spring Phase 1 Project, which is approximately 85 percent complete. U.S. Oil Sands said that costs to date were coming in below budget on the $60 million project, which will be the first commercial operation of its kind in America when completed. The company had previously described a natural citrus extract process that it said is environmen-tally friendly. Opponents of the project, includ-ing conservation groups, have challenged the permits issued to U.S. Oil Sands. Demonstrations at the site have led to arrests of people attempting to stop construction. Because U.S. Oil Sands is still in the pre-production stage of development, low oil prices do not impact the company directly. However, it has “decided to reduce the pace of field construction in order to maintain working capital flexibility. As the company has not completed its previous-ly-announced $10 million royalty financ-ing, U.S. Oil Sands will be pursuing other financing options, including the possibility of equity financing,” the release from the company said. Project work will continue at a reduced level and is expected to focus on critical path items and areas that will lead to the most efficient restart of full construction operations in the future. In spite of delays and increased costs that will occur with restart of full construction operations, U.S. Oil Sands is still targeting completion within the original $60 million approved budget. U.S. Oil Sands owns bitumen leases covering 32,005 acres of land in Utah’s Uinta Basin.

Expansion to bring 115 jobs to Brigham City's Honeyville Inc.

Honeyville will continue to grow in the Beehive State. The longtime food products company has announced it will expand its manufac-turing operations in northern Utah, adding 115 jobs over the next few years. The com-pany, Honeyville Inc., announced the $23 million project last week after being ap-proved for a tax credit of up to $520,261 by theGovernor’sOfficeofEconomicDevel-opment (GOED) board. The company was founded in 1951 by

Lowell Sherratt Sr., who bought a mill in Parowan to crack grain for a feed company in southern California. The company even-tually moved to Honeyville in Box Elder County and took the community name as Honeyville Grain. Beginning primarily with grain pro-duction, Honeyville has since expanded under the direction of Lowell Sherratt Jr., the founder’s son, and now specializes in private label co-packing, mixing/blending, grain milling, heat-treatment, wholesale in-gredient distribution and consumer prod-ucts. Last year, Lowell Sherratt Jr. retired

4 · February 15-21, 2016 · The Enterprise - Utah's Business Journal

SIC from page 1

GOEDfrom page 1

Find Your GreatnessWe cover your business

We want to talk • 801-531-1234 • www.moreton.com

“Much of what we do is investing into the pioneering gap [with] early-stage companies, both here in the U.S. and around the world, who, rather than try and figure out the next Uber or Facebook — which are incred-ibly successful investments — they’re picking companies that are solving really tough social or environmental problems,” said Patrick Mullen, executive direc-tor at the center. In a collaborative effort, students from Brigham Young University serve internships at the Sorenson Impact Center. The portfolio investment manager at SIC, Caleb Jones, said that the center has worked on over $100 million in trans-actions across several conti-nents. Some of the notable suc-cesses that Jones cited include the Graduation Alliance, a Salt Lake City education company that works with high school dropouts and provides them the services needed to assist them in obtaining their high school diploma; BRCK, a technology hardware solution expanding the benefits of Internet connectiv-ity and e-learning to peri-urban and rural East Africa; and Kinara Capital, a small business lender in India that fosters economic growth and job creation. Jones also pointed to Simpa Networks, a pay-as-you-go solar home unit provider to peri-urban and rural Indians; and Rimidi Diabetes, a U.S.-based diabetes management platform through smart analytics and pre-dictive algorithms that is increas-ing wellness and health outcomes for those suffering from diabe-tes. SIC measures the success of its business collaborations based on factors that include both the scale of the global impact and the financial return, according to Jones. “Success is measured by supporting scalable, sustain-able solutions to social or envi-ronmental problems through business ventures. Our portfolio continues to succeed both in rais-ing additional capital from inves-tors, scaling impact and growing revenue. Impact measurement is customized to the individual investment opportunity.” Jones points to some of the favorable outcomes achieved at SIC, which include an increased income by an annual $2.2 mil-lion across more than 30,000 jobs where income is less than $2 per day, increased access to financial services and financial education for more than 11,000 people, the facilitation of $16.9 million in investments or lend-ing for people who were previ-ously without access to capital,

high school diplomas for 150 at-risk dropouts, access for than 15 million teachers and students to free supplemental content for improved learning outcomes and access to electricity for 65,800 people in India. “For us, we’re pretty deliber-ate when thinking about what are the outputs and outcomes we want to see, and by output, that would mean, specifically, we want to get someone a high school diploma or we want to get someone a loan who needs to access capital or we want to get someone access to affordable housing, but even further, tracking outcome,” said Mullen. “What happens to that individual because they have a diploma? Or, what happens to that individual because they got this loan? Or, what happens to that individual because they have access to affordable housing? So it really depends on the business, but I think the correspondent of how we measure success is look-ing at that output vs. outcome type of mentality.” Students that participate in the SIC program come from all over campus, said Mullen. That includes business school, public policy school, engineering school and others and range from under-graduate students to Ph.D. candi-dates. The program is demanding, according to Mullen. “We imple-mented our own Wall Street-type training program. We know the students come in really fresh, but do expect a lot as far as time spent and engagement. Most stu-dents end up working 20 hours per week at the center,” he said. Mullen is very proud that there has been 100 percent job placement for students coming out of the SIC program, which he says is much higher than their peers at local universities. In fact, the students are even standing out among Ivy League schools. In a recent MBA competi-tion called MIINT (MBA Impact Investing Network & Training) at the Wharton School of Business in Philadelphia, SIC was the only program that brought undergrad-uate students to compete against MBA students from schools such as Yale, Duke and the University of Chicago. After one of the undergrad-uates from SIC gave his pre-sentation, he was approached by a recruiter from the Heron Foundation and told that his pre-sentation was the best she’d ever seen and offered him a job as an associate at an MBA level. He remarked that he didn’t have an MBA and, baffled, she said, “I don’t care, I’m still going to hire you.” According to Mullen, his student did accept the job of his dreams at 20 years of age and now lives New York City. Such is the history of a very successful program.

as CEO after more than 40 years in the position. Food industry vet-eran and son-in-law Ed Hemphill succeeded him. Honeyville is a privately held, family-owned and operated manufacturer and distributor of more than 3,000 dry food ingre-dients. Its customers include mid- and major grocers, club stores and health food retailers; cereal and pet food manufacturers; bak-ery and food manufacturers; plus those focused on e-commerce food and health and emergency preparedness. The company is based in Brigham City and has a grain mill in Honeyville; retail stores in Brigham City and Salt Lake City; and a warehouse and distri-bution facility near the Salt Lake City airport that was established in 1981. In addition to Utah, the company has operations in Cali-fornia, Arizona and Ohio. The company’s mill near Brigham City will continue oper-ating, with the expansion occur-ring elsewhere in northern Utah. Ogden has offered the company a local incentive. Inbriefing theGOEDboardduring its meeting last week, board member Peter Mouskon-dis described the Sherratts as “an icon family in this community.” “It’s really important, I think, to offer something and to continue to push for family business lega-cies to continue to grow in Utah, and this is exciting,” Mouskondis said. While the company plans to

grow in other states as well, “it’s nice to see that they are still going to be grounded here,” he added. The expansion project’s jobs are expected to result in total new wages of $36 million over an eight-year period and new state tax revenues of $2.6 million dur-ing that time. Johnny Ferry, the company’s vice president of customer devel-opment, suggested that the project could help attract other companies to the area. “Honeyville’s customer base includes some of the largest re-tailers and manufacturers in the

world, and those people will be coming and trekking through Utah to come to our facility and see the products we manufacture for them as a private label,” he told the board. “And they’ll drive down the road and look to their left and their right and they’ll see the resourc-es and they’ll see the people and they’ll see the positive business atmosphere that we have here. And they will say, ‘Well, may-be we should be here in Utah, as well. Maybe Utah is a pretty good state.’ And we’ll turn to them and we’ll say, ‘Utah is a great state.’”

General Growth Properties has sold the Provo Towne Centre to California-based Brixton Capital. As part of the agreement the 80-store shopping and entertainment property will be managed by Jones Lang LaSalle, a Chicago-based commercial real estate firm with an office in Salt Lake City. The 802,000-square-foot enclosed mall is located just south of downtown Provo. Jones Lange LaSalle senior vice president Cynthia Murphy will lead the management for the mall. Headquartered in San Diego, Brixton Capital is the private investment vehicle of BruttenGlobal, an international family office that owns and manages an array of holdings valued at more than $3.3 billion across numerous industries, including real estate, banking, professional sports, aviation, media and consumer products. “Provo Towne Centre is located in one of the fastest-growing cities in Utah that’s home to some of the world’s most successful tech companies, and in close proximity to Brigham Young and Utah Valley universities,” said Murphy. “The trade area brings the buying power of more than 60,000 students to the mall, making it a top destination for retailers looking to expand in the region.” Built in 1998, the mall anchored by national retailers and features a food court, restaurants and movie theaters.

Provo mall changes hands