Mattress maker Serta is getting into bed with another buyout shop.
Private-equity firm Advent International has struck a deal to acquire Serta, the nation’s biggest bedding company, for $3 billion, The Post has learned.
The deal is expected to be announced later today.
It marks the second time that Serta has been flipped to private equity. Ares Management LLC and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan bought Serta in 2005, and later combined it with fellow mattress maker Simmons.
Since then, Serta has been on a roll and recently surpassed Sealy as the nation’s best-selling mattress brand. Much of that success stems from the introduction of a gel memory-foam bed that Serta claims stays cooler than the popular Tempur-Pedic.
Tempur-Pedic is still the biggest seller of foam beds, but it has had to reduce prices after losing market share to rivals, according to one mattress executive.
Serta, based in Hoffman Estates, Ill., sells many of its beds in Sam’s Club, Big Lots and to hotels.
“I think they are selling at a perfect time. Serta is cresting,” said the mattress executive.
When Serta bought Simmons out of bankruptcy in 2010, the owners agreed to operate the brands as separate companies to gain regulatory approval for the deal.
Simmons was owned by private-equity firm Thomas H. Lee when it filed for Chapter 11.
Part of Serta’s sales pitch to Boston-based Advent is that regulators will allow a new buyer to combine the operations to achieve savings.
The $3 billion price means Advent is paying around 10 times Ebidta, or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, sources said. Publicly traded peers Sealy and Tempur-Pedic trade for less than a seven times Ebitda.
Private-equity firms continue to cozy up to mattress makers, believing they require little money to operate and can keep raise prices to boost earnings.
Bain Capital, which invested $140 million in Sealy back in 1997, sold it for $741 million seven years later to rival PE firm KKR. Sealy’s shares have sagged since KKR’s acquisition, however.
jkosman@nypost.com