4th March 2021
Business revenues up 270% organically during FPE investment
Software growth of close to 3 times in 2020 alone as COVID forced remote working
FPE Capital LLP (‘FPE’), the specialist software and services growth investor, is pleased to announce the highly successful sale of its investment in Sohonet, to mid-market private equity firm LDC. The terms of the transaction are not disclosed.
Sohonet provides over 500 media companies and thousands of media professionals with a wide range of technically advanced and highly secure solutions. These are designed to help media professionals collaborate on projects with their internationally distributed teams to create the magic that appears on our screens for feature films, TV shows and advertising.
Sohonet’s expert team and services help to remove the obstacles that get in the way of the creative process, enabling teams to access, move, manage and store their content securely throughout the production and post-production workflow. The business has a global presence across Europe, North America and Australasia, including locations in London, Los Angeles, New York and Sydney.
In addition to very strong organic growth, the business has made a material investment into the technology base of the business – notably its 2020 Emmy Award-Winning remote collaboration solution, ClearView Flex and its global core network. Its strategic acquisition of Exchange Communications in January 2020 has also brought significant expansion to Sohonet’s ‘on location’ production footprint in the US. The sale will generate a 4.2x MoC for FPE funds.
Chuck Parker, CEO at Sohonet said:
Our time with FPE as a growth investor has been completely transformational for Sohonet. Together, we’ve taken a business with a great service reputation within the global video production industry, invested innovation and capital into solving important industry problems, and have worked to scale them out to film, tv and advertising productions around the world. FPE has been an active partner and a key element to our success, and I am excited about the opportunity to build on these foundations with the team at LDC.
David Barbour, Managing Partner at FPE commented:
The sale of our investment in Sohonet is another milestone in the fantastic growth of the business. Under our ownership it has increased revenues organically by over 270% and we would like to congratulate Chuck and the entire team on their significant achievements in building a business of global scale and which has developed proprietary software products which alone have seen sales growth of almost 3 times in 2020 as COVID changes working practices in the industry.”
FPE and the shareholders were advised by Raymond James (corporate finance), Goodwin Proctor (legal), RSM (financial) and EY-Parthenon (market). Mishcon de Reya acted for the Sohonet management team and Butler Snow on US tax.