Riverside Partners has acquired 3Play Media in partnership with the company’s founder-led senior management team.
3Play Media provides closed captioning, transcription, and audio description to more than 2,500 universities, companies, and government agencies including Procter & Gamble, Time Warner Cable, MIT, Autodesk, the Internal Revenue Service, and the University of Wisconsin. The company’s technology services combine human editors with natural language processing and machine learning capabilities that result in both high accuracy and fast turnaround at scale. 3Play Media, led by co-CEO’s Chris Antunes and Josh Miller, was founded in 2007 and is headquartered in Boston (www.3playmedia.com).
“We are thrilled to partner with Chris Antunes and Josh Miller as founders and leaders of the business in order to support the significant continued growth of the company,” said Michelle Noon, a general partner at Riverside. “We were attracted to 3Play due to its demonstrated track record of success, its high quality and discerning recurring customer base and its proprietary, scalable software platform. Our significant investment in 3Play marks not only our recognition of the company’s achievements to date but, as importantly, our belief in the continued future success.”
“From the founding of the company, we’ve had a vision that one day, every video will be accessible for a variety of reasons and use cases. This partnership with Riverside will ensure that we are on the forefront of making that a reality even faster,” said Mr. Miller.
“Among the many potential investments that we evaluate, 3Play stood out to us as a highly differentiated, founder-led company with a leading market position and squarely within Riverside’s area of experience and interest,” added David Belluck, a general partner at Riverside.
Riverside invests in North American-based healthcare and technology-oriented companies that have EBITDAs from $5 million to $25 million. The firm was founded in 1989 and is based in Boston (www.riversidepartners.com).
Abacus Finance Group served as Administrative Agent and Sole Lender for senior secured credit facilities to support this transaction. “As we have come to expect from the Abacus team, the transaction was handled smoothly and rapidly from the outset,” said Ms. Noon. “We were impressed by the Abacus team’s industry knowledge, speed of execution and high conviction to close the transaction, all important criteria to our lender selection.”
“As Michelle noted, this was our second transaction with Riverside,” said Tim Clifford, president and CEO of Abacus, “and as before, they brought us a company of exceptional quality. We were well prepared for due diligence since we know the software and media technology space well, especially the closed captioning and transcription sector. Therefore, we were able to move quickly – an important aspect of Making Life Easier™ through our Total Partnership Approach™.” Other Abacus team members involved in the transaction included Sean McKeever, Jonathan Choa, Joseph Lee, and Jacob Wise.
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 $75 million with a typical hold size ranging from $10 million to $40 million. Since its inception in June 2011, Abacus has closed over $2 billion in financings. Abacus is headquartered in New York and is an affiliate of New York Private Bank & Trust (www.abacusfinance.com).
© 2019 Private Equity Professional | May 23, 2019