17th June 2021
Sale generates a 3.5x MoC return for FPE Capital 3rd exit from FPE Fund II in past 3 months
FPE Capital LLP (‘FPE’), the specialist software and services growth investor, is pleased to announce the successful sale of its investment in leading SaaS testing and assessment provider Questionmark, to Battery Ventures backed Learnosity. The terms of the transaction are not disclosed.
Questionmark‘s SaaS solutions provide global end-to-end assessments, proctoring, badging and reporting to over 600 customers in the corporate, government, academic and certification sectors. Customers are spread globally with the three largest single end markets being US (38%), Germany (26%) and UK (15%). Working from a strong base within the corporate and government Learning & Compliance market, Questionmark has diversified into certification and proctoring and is an emerging disruptor in the large and growing market with strong digital tailwinds.
FPE invested in Questionmark in 2016 and through heavy investment into product and sales capability transformed its growth profile in the exciting and growing assessment market. FPE’s significant growth capital funded an expansion of the company’s management team and completed a complex technology migration to a single SaaS software platform. Working alongside the founders, FPE recruited a new CEO Lars Pedersen to lead the growth of the business once the technology migration was completed, and this has seen the business grow strongly in the past two years, with annual revenue growth at the end of 2020 running at 35%.
The sale generates a 3.5x MoC for FPE funds and represents the third sale from FPE’s debut institutional fund, FPE Fund II, in the past 3 months. Other successful investments exited are leading drinks market data analytics business IWSR, sold to Bowmark Capital, and media software business Masstech, sold to Genstar Capital portfolio company Telestream.
Learnosity provides the assessment infrastructure powering more than 120 of the world’s leading learning platforms and publishers. Serving 39.3 million learners across the K-12, higher ed, vocational learning, and corporate training markets, Learnosity’s suite of cloud-based APIs enable cutting-edge assessments, faster time-to-market, and lower development costs. Learnosity is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland with a significant R&D team in Sydney, Australia, and a US office in New York.
The combination of Learnosity and Questionmark’s highly complementary technology platforms and customer bases will provide a powerful new force to exploit the continuing digital disruption of the global learning and assessment markets .
Lars Pedersen, CEO at Questionmark said:
“With the active support of FPE since its investment in 2016, the business has been transformed into a leading global player in the assessment technology market. The combination with Learnosity creates a larger independent platform to continue strong growth in this exciting market segment.”
David Barbour, Managing Partner at FPE commented:
“The sale of our investment in Questionmark to Learnosity is great recognition of the journey to create a global leading assessment business through our financial and operational involvement with the business over more than four years. The business built on our existing strengths in the Human Capital Management/Learning sector with Kallidus, an earlier portfolio company of FPE and which was a partner with Questionmark. In addition, we have been delighted to work again with Lars Pedersen, CEO, who also led an earlier FPE portfolio company CreditCall to a similarly successful exit.”
FPE and the shareholders were advised by Houlihan Lokey (corporate finance), Goodwins (legal), EY (financial and commercial diligence) and Intechnica (technology diligence).
For further information, please contact:
For Questionmark:
Lars Pedersen, CEO +44 (0) 7825 512381
For FPE Capital:
David Barbour, Managing Partner +44 (0) 7770 585 174
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