Intelius Holdings, a portfolio company of H.I.G. Capital, has acquired Classmates, Inc. from United Online at an enterprise valuation of $30 million. United Online – which owns several Internet companies including Juno and NetZero – acquired the company in 2004 from owner and founder Randy Conrads.
Classmates operates an online social network service that provides tools for users to reunite with former high school classmates. The company has over 70 million members – the number of paid members is much lower – and is headquartered in Seattle (www.classmates.com).
Intelius, acquired by H.I.G. in July 2015, utilizes access to online databases and public record repositories to provide on-demand information about individuals and can identify connections to other people, places and things. Typical uses of Intelius are for people search, background checks, criminal record search, and reverse phone number look-up. Intelius has sold more than 50 million reports since its founding in 2003 by Naveen Jain. The company currently employs 63 people and is based in Bellevue, WA (www.intelius.com).
H.I.G. Capital specializes in providing capital to small and medium-sized companies and invests in management-led buyouts and recapitalizations of manufacturing or service businesses. H.I.G. has more than $19 billion of capital under management. The firm was founded in 1993 and is based in Miami with additional offices in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, New York, San Francisco, London, Hamburg, Madrid, Milan, Paris, and Rio de Janeiro (www.higcapital.com).
Monroe Capital, which provided financing for H.I.G.’s buy of Intelius, supported the buy of Classmates through an increase in an existing facility. Monroe Capital provides senior and junior debt and equity co-investments to middle-market companies. The firm was founded in 2004 and maintains offices in Chicago, Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco (www.monroecap.com).
2015 PEPD • Private Equity’s Leading News Magazine • 8-21-15