Achievements
Organic ARR growth since entry
Rule of 40 at exit
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Human Capital Management (‘HCM’) software is one of FPE’s key focus areas, or clusters, within the UK and Irish software sector. It also one of our most successful. Zest represents the third successful realisation within HCM, each of which has delivered an over 3x return on invested capital to our investors.
Following the carve-out of the business from a UK listed plc, over a four-year investment Zest more than doubled its revenues organically and achieved a “Rule of 40+” performance in its year of exit (being the aggregate of annual revenue growth rate plus EBITDA margin, and a key benchmark for the quality of a software business).
FPE supported Zest over the course of our investment period by:
Recruiting a number of key executives with prior experience in the employee benefits sector and private equity ownership, including CEO, Matt Russell.
Supporting key product development initiatives including the development of a mobile application and a marketplace that were critical to retention of existing customers and winning new logos.
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Refocusing the business’s Go-to-Market function on winning customers directly. This involved creating a marketing function from scratch and investing in building-out the sales team.
Securing growth debt financing to enable all of the above initiatives.
Matt Russell. CEO of Zest The period since FPE’s investment has been truly transformational for Zest. We’ve experienced significant growth and made substantial progress across our product, team, and go-to-market approach. FPE has been a highly engaged and supportive partner throughout - playing a key role in helping us reach this stage.
