Abacus Finance Group was the Administrative Agent and Lead Arranger for $20 million in senior secured credit facilities to back the recapitalization of AccountabilIT by WestView Capital Partners. Abacus also made an equity co-investment to support the transaction.
AccountabilIT is a provider of outsourced IT services to middle-market companies as wells as small and medium-sized businesses. The company provides a range of outsourced IT services including cloud transformation, managed public cloud and hybrid cloud infrastructure management, application management, database administration and cybersecurity. The company, led by its CEO and founder Chuck Vermillion, was founded in August 2016 and is headquartered in Scottsdale, AZ (www.accountabilit.com).
“It was great to work once again with the WestView principals, some of whom we have known for more than a decade,” said Tim Clifford, President and CEO of Abacus Finance. “They have consistently brought us attractive opportunities like AccountabilIT that align well with our investment strategy.”
Proceeds from this investment were also used by AccountabilIT to acquire Little Rock, AR-based ClearPointe Technologies, a provider of IT managed services for data center environments around the world. The company, led by CEO Jeff Johnson, currently manages servers, applications, and connectivity in both public and private clouds, hybrid clouds as well as on-premises data centers (www.clearpointe.cloud). The buy of ClearPointe is the second acquisition for AccountabilIT since its founding in 2016. “There are tremendous synergies by combining our two organizations,” said Mr. Johnson. “ClearPointe is a leader in Microsoft centric services including Azure-based solutions and Azure management. AccountabilIT’s competencies in application management, database administration, Linux administration and managed security are the perfect complement to our services.”
“We have enjoyed a longstanding relationship with Abacus,” said Westview Principal Greg Thomas. “As in past transactions, they took the time to fully understand the cash flow needs of the business and provided a flexible financing solution that supports growth.”
WestView makes majority and minority investments of $10 million to $60 million in lower middle market growth companies. Sectors of interest include business services, software and IT services, consumer, healthcare technology and outsourcing and growth industrial. Target companies will have operating profits between $3 million and $20 million.
Abacus provides cash flow-based senior financing to private equity-sponsored, lower-middle market companies that have EBITDA between $3 million and $15 million. Debt facilities can be as large as $60 million with a typical hold size ranging from $10 million to $30 million. New York-based Abacus was formed in June 2011 and is an affiliate of New York Private Bank & Trust (www.abacusfinance.com).
“We were extremely impressed with AccountabilIT’s senior management team,” added Sean McKeever, Abacus Managing Director & COO, “and are excited to be their financing partner as they embark on the next stage of growth. As in other transactions, our success was a function of our speed, flexibility, and certainty of close – key aspects of what we call our Total Partnership Approach.”
“The decision to select Abacus Finance for this transaction was easy,” said WestView Managing Partner Richard Williams.
WestView manages approximately $1.7 billion in capital across four funds and is headquartered in Boston (www.wvcapital.com).
© 2018 Private Equity Professional | September 20, 2018