12th March 2021
FPE Capital LLP (‘FPE’), the specialist software and services growth investor, is pleased to announce the successful sale of its investment in Masstech, to Genstar Capital backed Telestream. The terms of the transaction are not disclosed.
Masstech provides over 400 media and broadcast companies with advanced and award-winning software to optimise their video storage and associated workflows. As video creation and distribution continues to skyrocket in volume, the media and broadcast industry is pushing the boundary of how it stores and manages content, and Masstech is at the forefront of assisting its customers' storage and workflow across public cloud, private cloud and hybrid on-premise solutions.
In 2017, FPE backed the consolidation of two well established businesses in this market, Masstech and SGL. CEO George Kilpatrick was recruited from AWS to consolidate the two historical products into one cloud-optimised platform. Following a period of material investment into the product, Kumulate was launched in 2019 and, with developing market traction, Masstech’s roadmap of further SaaS based product offerings expanded.
Telestream is a leading provider of software to the world’s media and entertainment companies, where throughout the entire digital media lifecycle its products make it possible to get video content to any audience regardless of how it is created, distributed or viewed. Telestream is backed by Genstar Capital, a long established, San Francisco based, technology private equity investor. The combination of Telestream and Masstech’s respective market positions, customer bases and technology propositions will provide strengthened solutions for integrated video workflow to the media industry as its needs continue to develop.
The sale will generate an initial 2.6x MoC for FPE funds, of which a significant proportion has been taken in Telestream stock alongside Genstar Capital, as FPE expects to benefit further from the growth prospects of the combined group.
George Kilpatrick, CEO at Masstech said:
With the active support of FPE over the past few years we have been investing in the transformation of our technology platform to meet the evolving needs of the media market. We’re excited that Telestream recognised that by acquiring Masstech and combining its Kumulate and Flashnet platforms into their existing suite of video storage solutions, Telestream is strengthening its capability in software defined workflows, cloud storage management and intuitive user interfaces. By using Telestream’s incredible media market penetration, we look forward to engaging a wider audience with our combined SaaS solutions.
David Barbour, Managing Partner at FPE commented:
The sale of our investment in Masstech to Telestream is great recognition of the value of the investment the business has made in its technology platform to be at the forefront of the media industry’s use cases as it increasingly adopts cloud native solutions. We are delighted with the sale and to be partnering with Genstar to generate further value for our investors as Telestream continues to deliver leading solutions to a very demanding and rapidly changing media marketplace.
FPE and the shareholders were advised by Stifel (corporate finance) and Stephenson Harwood (legal).
For further information, please contact:
For Masstech:
George Kilpatrick, CEO, Masstech
+44 (0) 7740 812 968
For FPE:
David Barbour, Managing Partner, FPE Capital
+44 (0) 7770 585 174