Lovell Minnick has made an investment in Engage People, a provider of loyalty rewards and employee recognition programs. The investment will be used to back growth at Engage which will continue to be majority owned and operated by the current management team.
Engage’s products include Podium, a SaaS-based platform that manages end-to-end loyalty rewards, employee recognition, sales and sales channel incentive programs. The company’s customers include financial institutions, hotels, airlines, telecommunications companies and others. Engage is headquartered near Toronto in Concord, ON and has additional offices and employees in London, Rome, New York, Orlando and Sydney (www.engagepeople.com).
“We have more than doubled in size every year for the past five years both in terms of revenue and client base,” said Jonathan Silver, Chief Executive Officer of Engage. “As our rapid growth continues and we expand our offerings to clients worldwide, the support and capital investment from Lovell Minnick will help us scale to meet increased demand for our solutions across different industries.”
“We are thrilled to support Engage at this key inflection point in its development. The company’s proprietary, technology-driven solutions, combined with its history of meeting the increasingly diverse client needs across industries and geographies, positions it well to address the changing demands of the loyalty and incentive marketplace,” said Spencer Hoffman, a Partner at Lovell Minnick.
Lovell Minnick provides buyout and growth capital to middle-market financial services companies, typically making equity commitments of between $20 million and $100 million. Areas of specific interest include asset management, financial product distribution, insurance and securities brokerage, specialty finance, and related technology and business services. Lovell Minnick is the successor to the private equity affiliate of Putnam Lovell Securities which was established in 1999 by Jeffrey Lovell and James Minnick. The firm has offices in Philadelphia, New York and Los Angeles (www.lovellminnick.com).
”This is our first investment in Canada, a market in which we see a number of exciting investment opportunities. As an investor with national reach and relationships, and as we’ve done with many of our portfolio companies, we hope to identify and introduce both new clients and strategic acquisitions for Engage,” said Steven Pierson, President and Partner at Lovell Minnick.
The investment in Engage is the fourth portfolio company for Lovell Minnick’s fourth fund, Lovell Minnick Equity Partners IV, which closed in November 2015 with $750 million of commitments. The other three portfolio companies are as follows: J.S. Held, acquired in March 2015, is a consultant to insurance carriers on property loss, dispute resolution, and construction services (www.jsheld.com); LSQ Funding, acquired in April 2015, is a provider of working capital services to small and mid-sized businesses (www.lsq.com); and Worldwide Facilities, acquired in July 2015, is a wholesale insurance brokerage (www.wwfi.com).
Raymond James was the financial advisor to Engage People for this transaction.
© 2017 Private Equity Professional | January 17, 2017
