Quad-C Management has sold its portfolio company Curvature, a provider of IT services and a seller of new and used network hardware, to Systems Maintenance Services (SMS), a portfolio company of Partners Group. Partners Group acquired SMS from Thomas H. Lee Partners in August 2016.
Quad-C invested in Network Hardware Resale in November 2012. The company’s name was changed in July 2014 to Curvature to convey a more all-inclusive sales model aside from third-party hardware sales. In November 2014, Curvature acquired third-party maintenance and support services provider CSU Industries. Today, Curvature procures, maintains and upgrades IT equipment and provides support services to multi-vendor networks and data centers. The company has more than 10,000 customers, including some of the largest telecommunications carriers and top financial services firms. Curvature is led by its CEO Mike Sheldon and is headquartered in Santa Barbara (www.curvature.com).
“Over the course of our partnership with Quad-C, Curvature has transformed from a networking equipment vendor to a balanced IT services company,” said Mr. Sheldon. “Quad-C supported us throughout this process as we diversified our hardware offering, expanded into third-party maintenance and managed services, opened offices in Japan and India and completed the company’s first acquisition.”
Quad-C invests from $35 million to $125 million of equity in companies with enterprise values of $75 million to $400 million. Sectors of interest include business services, consumer, general industrial, healthcare, specialty distribution and transportation and logistics. The firm was founded in 1989 and is headquartered in Charlottesville (www.quadcmanagement.com).
“We feel extremely fortunate to have partnered with Mike Sheldon and his team over the past four years,” said Steve Burns, Managing Partner at Quad-C. “We are proud of what the company was able to accomplish with the significant investments in new business lines, people, service infrastructure and geographic span under our ownership and pleased to complete another successful owner-operator recap.”
SMS is a provider of IT hardware infrastructure and support services through more than 100 service centers across North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, covering equipment from all the major IT original equipment manufacturers. In 2015, SMS had revenues of approximately $245 million. The company has approximately 900 engineers on its staff and is headquartered in Charlotte (www.sysmaint.com).
Partners Group is a global private markets investment management firm with over $40 billion of assets under management in private equity, private real estate, private infrastructure and private debt. The firm is headquartered in Zug, Switzerland, and has over 700 employees across 18 offices around the globe (www.partnersgroup.com).
© 2017 Private Equity Professional | March 2, 2017
