Private Equity - Directs
Since 1996, Partners Group has directly invested in more than 100 companies. Post-investment, Partners Group’s investment professionals concentrate on growing and improving the company and its operations in order to increase profitability. Both measures provide a significant contribution to the company’s long term value creation and hence result in attractive returns at the time of exit.
Value creation. Partners Group is a long term investor who focuses on growing and improving businesses. The company works closely with the management of individual portfolio assets and provides them with substantial financial and operational resources.
Industry network. Partners Group has expended similar amounts of time, expertise and resources supporting its portfolio companies, thus helping them to achieve leaderships positions in their fields and to come out of the market crisis with stable set-ups.
Investment experience. Partners Group is invested in more than 5'000 privately held assets in markets in which no public information is available, allowing the firm to track the performance of individual assets. This ensures a significant edge when making investment decisions.
Industry groups. Partners Group’s dedicated industry specialists seek opportunities to create value through working with management teams or corporate partners in different sectors to help own organizations reposition and expand their businesses to attain leadership positions in their markets.
Personal commitment. Partners Group’s professionals and senior management are highly involved in generating value in client’s portfolios and have committed over a quarter of a billion Swiss francs to investment programs alongside clients.
Higher returns. Investments benefit from Partners Group’s in-depth knowledge and understanding of various private markets segments. It is of utmost importance to understand the entire private markets spectrum, in order to be able to capitalize on such multi-disciplinary investment opportunities and therefore generate outstanding returns.
Global scale with local know how. Investment professionals operate from 14 offices on five continents. They are recruited in local markets thus ensuring the firm profits from their intimate understanding of cultural environments and local businesses and also from their existing regional industry network.
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Examples – private equity direct investments
Company.
Founded in 1946, Swiss-based ODLO Sports Group AG (ODLO) is the market leader in Europe, specialized in functional sportswear under the Sports Underwear and Nordic Walking brands. Its extensive collections are categorized into Outdoor, Running, X-Country, Tec Shirts and Kids. The company is vertically integrated with strong focus on in-house design, manufacturing as well as distribution.
Investment partner. Allured by ODLO's growth potential and strong foothold in the industry, together with its cutting-edge technology innovations, Partners Group (PG) had taken a leading role in the buyout acquisition of ODLO. PG played a critical role in the implementation of ODLO's successful buy-and-build strategy and its brand-repositioning efforts, which constitute the foundation of the company's subsequent growth. With PG's strategic guidance and ownership, ODLO has successfully expanded its global presence via the establishment of distribution platforms in Continental Europe, the United Kingdom and North America, in addition to the construction of its own state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Romania in 2004.
As of PG's exit in 2006, ODLO's annual sales have grown exponentially to CHF 100m and its workforce has grown to over 450 employees worldwide.
Exit and returns. PG sold its stake to a strategic financial investor, generating a return of 4.0x on invested capital or 26% IRR for its investors.
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Company. Casema was the third largest cable TV operator in the Netherlands with over 1.3 million subscribers. The Company's network was located mainly in the central and southwestern parts of the Netherlands and served over 20 cities including The Hague, Utrecht and Brenda. Casema offered analogue TV, digital TV and broadband internet access to its residential customers, and leased line data communications and voice telephony to its business customers.
Knowing the industry. The company was purchased from France Telecom in 2003 together with our investment partners GMT, Carlyle and Providence, in the wake of the burst of the telecom bubble. During our holding period the company has been transformed from a utility-like analog television provider into the leading "triple play" operator in the Netherlands, offering digital television, broadband internet and telephony to the Dutch consumers. As of June 30, 2006 , the company had 1.3 million television subscribers, 400'000 broadband internet and 136'000 telephony subscribers. Additionally, Casema has achieved revenue growth of 10% annually since 2002 and approximately doubled EBITDA, while increasing its headcount to approximately 1'050 from 750 employees at the end of 2002.
Exit and returns. The company was sold to a group of financial investors and Partners Group generated a return of 4.5x invested capital or 90% IRR for its investors.
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Company. Originally a subsidiary of Spanish Group Guascor, Eolica CESA was a developer and operator of wind power farms in Spain. Partners Group invested in February 2001 in partnership with Spanish investment firm Mercapital.
Identifying early trends. Pioneering early the trend for renewable energy, we were attracted by the advanced development of the wind power market in Spain, CESA's position as one of the largest renewable energy platforms within Spain and an opportunity to create a major pan-regional energy provider. During our holding period, the company increased its capacity significantly, with wind farms completed or under development in Spain, Italy, Greece and Portugal. EBITDA also nearly doubled. By 2006, CESA was a leader in the Spanish wind power market and a significant early player in the growing European renewable sector.
Exit and returns. The business attracted significant strategic interest in the mid 2000s and was finally sold to Spanish conglomerate Acciona in 2006 thereby generating a return of 3.7x on invested capital and a 29% IRR.
Christoph Rubeli Head Private Equity Directs
Stefan Näf Co-Head Investment Solutions
Sergio Jovele Co-Head London
Christian Ebert Private Equity Investments
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