h3. Kennet supports WorldOne, a high-growth provider of data collection services to the healthcare industry, in its global expansion.
London, 8 September 2011 Kennet Partners, the technology growth equity investor, has announced a $25 million investment in WorldOne, a market leader in global healthcare data collection. The financing will be used to accelerate WorldOne’s global expansion and to fund continued development of new business lines. Michael Elias, Managing Director at Kennet, will join the Board of Directors of WorldOne.
WorldOne delivers global services to its customers in the healthcare market research sector, delivering access to the worldwide healthcare community. Since its establishment in London in 2000, WorldOne has developed a panel of 500,000 physicians and 200,000 healthcare professionals enabling the company to deliver large-scale projects in 80 countries. The company has greatly expanded its operations from Europe to North America and Asia, providing a true global offering to its customers. WorldOne’s international presence, commitment to quality and high level of client satisfaction has led the company to achieve consistently high growth. In 2010, WorldOne completed over 300,000 interviews with medical professionals for almost 2,000 market research projects.
“We have been enormously impressed by WorldOne’s growth profile and its dynamic leadership team. They have built a unique global healthcare panel, which is a tremendous asset upon which can be developed a number of exciting new business activities. Our investment in WorldOne is the result of our commitment to backing high growth, founder-led businesses and giving them the means to achieve their full growth potential”, said Michael Elias, Managing Director at Kennet.
Peter Kirk, CEO of WorldOne said “Having an investor like Kennet make a $25m commitment is a strong vote of confidence in what we have achieved and where WorldOne is headed. Kennet was an easy choice given its exceptional management team and history of success. WorldOne will benefit on multiple levels from Kennet’s investment and involvement. We look forward to the future.”
h2. About Kennet Partners
Kennet is a leading international growth equity firm that invests in companies in Europe and North America. Kennet supports entrepreneurial technology businesses with expansion capital to accelerate growth and build exceptional shareholder value. Kennet is an experienced investor with approximately $600 million in funds under management. For more information: www.kennet.com. Kennet Partners Limited is authorized and regulated in the UK by the Financial Services Authority.
h2. About WorldOne
Founded in 2000, WorldOne Research Ltd. has 330+ employees and is headquartered in New York and London, with regional offices in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Sao Paolo and Mexico City. WorldOne is an international research agency specializing in healthcare data collection for leading market research companies, agencies, and consulting firms. With one of the largest healthcare focused panels in the industry, WorldOne’s client portfolio includes the world’s top healthcare agencies and brands. WorldOne offers both online and offline access to medical professionals in over 80 countries. For more information: www.worldone.com
h3. Kennet will support Next Performance, a high growth provider of online performance marketing services, with its continued expansion.
PARIS - 31 May, 2011 Kennet Partners, the technology growth equity investor has announced a €16 million investment in Next Performance, a fast growing online advertising company that specialises in dynamic retargeting. The financing will be used to fund Next Performance’s continued European expansion. Michael Elias, Managing Director at Kennet, and Hillel Zidel, Director at Kennet, will join the Board of Directors of Next Performance.
Next Performance delivers high value retargeting and audience targeting services for brands and large retailers using its proprietary optimization technology. Next Performance’s innovative offering includes dynamic personalized banners, local targeting and massive reach campaigns on multiple business models (CPA, CPC and CPM). Since its establishment in 2008, Next Performance has expanded rapidly - its client base has increased from 11 customers in January 2009 to over 500 in May 2011. The combined retargeting and audience targeting proposition has enabled Next Performance to provide advertisers with a unique solution both to retarget existing customers as well as to acquire new customers.
“We’ve been extremely impressed with the rapid growth of Next Performance, a great example of a founder-led, bootstrapped business. Our investment in Next Performance is the result of our continued focus on the online advertising segment both in Europe and the US”, said Michael Elias, Managing Director at Kennet.
Vincent Karachira, CEO of Next Performance said “After a thorough selection process, we felt that Kennet would be the ideal investor in Next Performance because of their experience of working with companies as they expand internationally and their successful track record in the online advertising sector. Next Performance is already operating its retargeting business in 10 countries, and we will use the capital to significantly expand our international presence.” He added “We are pleased to welcome Kennet on board as a strategic partner.”
Hillel Zidel, Director at Kennet, said “The demand for dynamic retargeting has grown significantly as a result of the high level of performance it provides and Next Performance is uniquely positioned as one of the leaders in the category.”
h2. About Kennet Partners
Kennet is a leading international growth equity firm that invests in companies in North America and Europe. Kennet supports entrepreneurial technology businesses with expansion capital to accelerate growth and build exceptional shareholder value. Kennet is an experienced investor with approximately $600 million in funds under management. For more information: www.kennet.com. Kennet Partners Limited is authorized and regulated in the UK by the Financial Services Authority.
h2. About Next Performance
Launched in 2008, Next Performance delivers high value online retargeting and audience targeting services for brands and large retailers. The company has 500 clients across Europe (France, UK, Germany, Austria, Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, Italy, Spain, and Portugal). Working with ad exchanges, networks and exclusive publishers and using its proprietary optimization technology, Next Performance delivers billions of personalized dynamic banner impressions per month. For more information: www.nextperformance.com.
On 14 April 2011, Sequans Communications S.A. (NYSE: SQNS) and selling shareholders placed 7,700,000 American Depositary Shares (ADS) at a price of $10.00 per ADS, implying a market capitalization of $365 million.
Sequans became a Kennet portfolio company in July 2006 when we led a €17 million financing of the business. The company has since become a global leader in the design and development of 4G chipsets. Sequans is the first French company to list on NYSE since 2002.
Based in Paris, Sequans is a leading fabless designer, developer and supplier of 4G semiconductor solutions for wireless broadband applications. Its products incorporate baseband processor and RF transceiver ICs along with proprietary signal processing techniques, algorithms and software stacks to deliver high throughput, low latency, strong signal reach, low power consumption and high reliability in a small form factor and at a low cost. Sequans shipped more than 4.6 million units during 2010, compared to more than 0.9 million units during 2009.
Since Kennet has been a shareholder, the company grew from $6 million revenues in 2006 to over $68 million revenues in 2010.
Sequans is a terrific example of the kind of high-growth technology business that is at the core of Kennet's investment strategy.
h3. Second exit for Kennet’s latest fund in the past three months.
London, 31 January, 2011 - Kennet Partners, a leading international growth equity investor, today announced that goviral, the international online distributor of branded video content, has been acquired by AOL Europe, part of AOL Inc. [NYSE: AOL], for total consideration of $96.7 million.
Kennet invested €6.5 million in goviral in March 2009 and was the company’s only external shareholder. The acquisition of goviral will provide Kennet’s latest fund (Kennet III, which closed in 2008) with a strong return on its investment and is the fund’s second exit in the past three months.
goviral distributes branded video content for over 500 clients that include some of the world's most famous superbrands including Nike, Sony, Coke, Nokia, Audi, Mercedes and Proctor & Gamble. goviral's distribution network consists of over 18,000 publishers, leading social networks and mobile applications that generate up to 60 million video views each month and reach over 350 million internet users worldwide. goviral is headquartered in Copenhagen, with offices in Frankfurt, London, Munich, Stockholm, and Paris.
“The founders and management team at goviral have done a terrific job at building a valuable business without any outside capital. In fact, our 2009 investment was used solely to purchase existing shares from an early shareholder, and was non-dilutive to the company’s founders and management. goviral is a 100% bootstrapped business and we are very proud to have been associated with the company.” said Kennet Managing Director, Michael Elias, who joined the goviral board at the time of Kennet’s investment.
“We have had an exciting time and much fun building our business. It has been a period of extreme growth and international expansion. Kennet’s experience and business understanding has been very valuable as we developed our strategic positioning and built out our management team“ said goviral’s CEO, Rene Rechtman.
Arma Partners acted as exclusive financial adviser to goviral.
h2. About Kennet Partners
Kennet is a leading international growth equity firm that invests in companies in Europe and North America. Kennet invests in internet, technology, and business services companies, offering expansion capital for growth and for liquidity to existing shareholders. Kennet has funds under management of approximately $600 million.
For more information: www.kennet.com.
Kennet Partners Limited is authorized and regulated in the U.K. by the Financial Services Authority.
h2. About goviral
goviral A/S distributes branded video content for over 500 clients that include some of the world's most famous superbrands such as Nike, Sony, Coke, Nokia, Audi, Mercedes and Proctor & Gamble. goviral's distribution network consists of over 18,000 publishers, leading social networks and mobile applications categorised in 24 vertical that generate up to 60 million video views each month and reach over 350 million internet users worldwide. goviral's unique value proposition is guaranteeing clients a minimum number of targeted video views, bought on a pay-for-performance basis.
For more information: www.goviral.com
Media Enquiries
Kennet: Janina Jablonski, +44 207 839 8020, jjablonski@kennet.com
On 4 October 2010 Amazon.com announced it had agreed to acquire BuyVIP S.L
h3. Five Kennet portfolio companies recognized among America’s fastest growing companies.
Foster City, September 29, 2010 - Kennet Partners, a leading growth equity investor to capital-efficient companies, is delighted to announce that five of its portfolio companies have been named in the Inc. 500/5000 list of America's fastest growing private companies.
Kennet congratulates the founders, CEOs, and the teams of its portfolio companies for their sustained commitment, innovation and performance. The Inc. 500|5000 ranks companies by overall revenue growth over a three-year period.
AcademixDirect (639% growth), led by Karen Francis, offers performance-based marketing to the post-secondary education market. Its suite of marketing services benefit from its proprietary matching algorithm, data purity assurance software, lead scoring, and targeting capabilities, that improves how colleges and universities find, recruit, and retain students.
Revolution Prep (305% growth), led by Jake Neuberg and Ramit Varma is a test preparation and online education company that helps students score higher on SAT and ACT tests and improves high school graduation rates in the K12 market. The company provides SAT and ACT test preparation services though innovative distribution models.
IntelePeer (302% growth), led by Frank Fawzi, offers a communication-as-a-service platform that enables carriers, service providers, and enterprises to access interexchange voice communication services from the cloud through its low cost, hosted VOIP peering network.
Schoolwires (248% growth), led by Ed Marflak provides social communication, community-management and productivity solutions to the K-12 education market. The company’s product suite brings together robust, flexible website and community management and web 2.0/social network capabilities in a single, user-centric solution.
Recommind (219% growth), led by Bob Tennant, offers a market leading enterprise search and categorization platform that automatically organizes, manages, and distributes large volumes of information from multiple sources for the corporate, legal and eDiscovery markets. With faster access to the right information, organizations can save time, enhance the quality of work product, increase the value of information assets, and improve competitiveness and profits.
“These are all great examples of capital-efficient businesses funded largely by customer revenues. Despite the tough economic conditions over the last two years, these companies continued to grow rapidly because they successfully developed compelling value propositions for their customers” said Javier Rojas, Managing Director of Kennet Partners. “We backed these teams because we felt they had great potential, and we are proud to continue being their partners in growth. Congratulations!”
h2. About Kennet Partners
Kennet is a leading international growth equity firm that invests in companies in North America and Europe. Kennet supports entrepreneurial technology businesses with expansion capital to accelerate growth, provide founder liquidity and build exceptional shareholder value. Kennet is an experienced investor with approximately $600 million in funds under management.
For more information: www.kennet.com.
Javier Rojas blogs on great books, technology deals and entrepreneurship at http://seekinggrowth.typepad.com/