Periscope Equity has sold its investment in Power Digital, to Court Square Capital Partners.
Power Digital is a provider of digital performance marketing services that utilize data and analytics to drive digital commerce and customer engagement for e-commerce and direct-to-consumer brands. The company’s services include content development, social media development, influencer marketing, public relations, web development, email marketing and search engine optimization. Power Digital was founded in 2012 by CEO Grayson Lafrenz and is headquartered in San Diego with additional offices in New York City and San Francisco.
Periscope first invested in Power Digital in January 2019 and during its ownership term the company’s headcount grew by more than 400 employees and the platform generated more than six-fold revenue growth. In partnership with the management team of Power Digital, Periscope developed a three-year strategic plan, which included investments across people, commercial operations, product and operations, and technology.
Periscope and Power Digital also closed four add-on acquisitions with the buys of Factorial Digital (2019), DataQ (2020), Covet (2020), and Social Method (2021).
“This is an incredible milestone for the company and our team,” said Mr. Lafrenz. “The partnership with Periscope was instrumental in closing and integrating four acquisitions, aggressively investing in our proprietary technology platform to make it core to everything we do and expanding our product suite to be a highly valuable partner to our clients. I will forever be grateful to Periscope’s unwavering commitment to our day-one mission and culture of becoming the most valued, respected, and differentiated privately held performance marketing platform in the world.”
“Power Digital’s exponential growth is the result of the management team’s flawless execution of the company’s three-year strategic plan,” said John Findlay, a partner at Periscope. “Our partnership with Power Digital and Grayson, building a true market leader, has been an absolute thrill and we want to congratulate the entire management team for this milestone achievement and know that the company is well-positioned to continue on its trajectory with Court Square.”
“This has been one of the most rewarding partnerships in our history and represents a continuation of our successful track record of backing and partnering with founders, such as Grayson, to scale their platforms to be truly tech-enabled and highly differentiated within their ecosystems,” said Steve Jarmel, a partner at Periscope. “Congratulations to the entire Power team on its new partnership with Court Square.”
New York City-based Court Square, the buyer of Power Digital, invests in middle-market companies that have enterprise values of $150 million to $1.5 billion. Sectors of interest include business services, general industrials, healthcare, technology and telecommunications.
Canaccord Genuity, with a team led by Sanjay Chadda, Clayton Young, and Peter Sullivan, served as the exclusive financial advisor to Power Digital and Periscope Equity. Canaccord Genuity’s capital markets division provides institutional and corporate clients with investment banking, merger and acquisition, research, sales and trading services from offices in North America, UK & Europe, Asia, Australia and the Middle East.
Periscope makes control buyouts of founder or management-led technology-enabled business services companies that have revenues from $10 million to $50 million and EBITDA from $2 million to $8 million. In December 2020, Periscope held a final, above target, and oversubscribed closing of its second institutional fund, Periscope Equity II LP, with $225 million of capital commitments. The firm was founded by Mr. Jarmel in January 2013 and is headquartered in Chicago.
Kirkland & Ellis provided legal services to Periscope on this transaction. The Kirkland team was led by Partner Sandford Perl, Partner Robert Wilson, Associate Colleen Couture, and Tax Partner Kevin Coenen.
© 2022 Private Equity Professional | March 18, 2022