Prometheus Group, a portfolio company of Genstar Capital, has acquired VIZIYA, a developer of enterprise asset management software, from publicly traded Quarterhill for C$49.4 million (US$35.5 million).
VIZIYA designs and develops bolt-on software products to enhance exiting enterprise resource planning-based asset maintenance systems used by its customers. The company’s products – sold under the WorkAlign brand – are used in various industries to reduce costs and improve productivity, uptime, and reliability. VIZIYA is headquartered in Hamilton, Ontario, with ten additional worldwide offices.
Prometheus is a provider of plant maintenance operations and optimization software. The company’s products uses data analytics to improve the workflow – from planning to scheduling and execution – of plant maintenance operations for industrial facilities.
The customers of Prometheus include more than 200 blue-chip companies that are active in the oil & gas, chemical, pulp & paper, mining & metals, and utilities industries. The company, founded in 1998, has over 300 employees and is headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Genstar acquired Prometheus from Francisco Partners for over $1 billion in May 2019. At that time, Eric Huang, the chief executive officer and founder of Prometheus, maintained an equity interest in the company and Francisco Partners rolled a portion of its equity into a minority investment.
“The addition of VIZIYA will enable Prometheus to extend our global reach and customer universe,” said Mr. Huang. “VIZIYA’s expertise in the Oracle and Infor ecosystems will allow us to branch into new and exciting territory and even further diversify our customer composition. Prometheus looks forward to working with VIZIYA’s strong management team to conquer the asset management space.”
“Prometheus is one of the rare companies that is able to grow and expand during this challenging time,” said Eli Weiss, a managing director at Genstar. “It is encouraging that Genstar’s approach to helping its portfolio companies source and complete add-on acquisitions can be successful in this environment.”
The buy of VIZIYA is the fourth add-on acquisition completed by Prometheus since being acquired by Genstar last year. The earlier buys included WorkTech, a Massachusetts-based provider of contractor management and productivity software (April 2020); Roser ConSys, a Netherlands-based provider of plant shutdown, turnaround, and outages software (December 2019); and Engica, a UK-based provider of maintenance and safety management software (October 2019).
San Francisco-based Genstar invests from $50 million to $400 million in middle-market companies that have enterprise values from $50 million to $1 billion and EBITDAs greater than $15 million. The firm targets investments in the financial services, software, industrial technology, and healthcare industries. In February 2019, Genstar held a final closing of Genstar Capital Partners IX LP with $5.9 billion in capital commitments.
Quarterhill (TSX: QTRH), the seller of VIZIYA, is a technology holding company that invests in the software and intelligent industrial systems sectors. The company was founded in 1992 and is headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario.
Private Equity Professional | May 22, 2020
