Beech Tree Private Equity, with offices in Manchester and Birmingham, today announces its first hattrick of exits since establishing the firm in 2015. With a focus on supporting business owners scale up their companies in the technology, financial services and tech-enabled services sectors, Beech Tree is delighted to have secured three excellent exits. The three divestments, to a mixture of trade and private equity buyers, comprise the exits of Wavenet(a unified communications business based in Solihull), Redstor (a data management software platform based in Reading) and Fluent (a loan-broking platform based in Bolton). In aggregate, these exits returned £150m of value to investors in the Beech Tree PE funds, representing a return of 3.6x the original money invested.
The performance of the three businesses under Beech Tree stewardship has been outstanding. The value of the businesses sold increased by 384% over an average investment period of just over 4 years. Revenues grew in aggregate by 190% with profitability increasing by 222%.
Paul Franks, Managing Partner at Beech Tree Private Equity, comments “Since establishing the business in 2015 we are delighted to now be exiting businesses we have worked with over the past few years. We are really proud of the quality of the companies we have helped create, working with exceptionally talented teams. We are also incredibly grateful to the investors that have supported us and being able to thank them by generating strong returns is fantastic”.
Andy Marsh, Managing Partner at Beech Tree Private Equity comments “Our whole ethos since the very beginning was to partner with great leaders to help scale up their businesses. We have helped these three businesses do just that, helping build the senior teams, develop product and service propositions, increase sales in international geographies and adopt automation to drive efficiencies. I’m particularly proud of our bolt-on performance too – across the portfolio we have now completed 25 acquisitions with our businesses.”
Beech Tree Private Equity expect to announce further exciting exits over the course of this year.