Keensight Capital raises €1 billion for 5th growth buyout fund

Paris - Keen­sight Capi­tal, a leading private equity firm for pan-Euro­­pean invest­ments in growth buyouts, has laun­ched its new equity fund Keen­sight V with capi­tal commit­ments of one billion euros with the first and final closing, successfully comple­ting the fund­rai­sing after only four months. The fund has thus reached the upper limit (“hard cap”) set out in the fund statu­tes and excee­ded the origi­nally plan­ned volume of 750 million euros.

The fund was signi­fi­cantly over­sub­scri­bed due to strong demand from exis­ting and new inves­tors from Europe, North America, the Middle East and Asia. The inves­tor base of the Keen­sight V fund is globally diver­si­fied and consists of appro­xi­m­ately 90% insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors (asset mana­gers, pension funds, insu­rance compa­nies, banks and sove­reign wealth funds) and appro­xi­m­ately 10% execu­ti­ves of former port­fo­lio compa­nies and family offices.

The new Growth Buyout Fund is a consis­tent conti­nua­tion of Keen­sight Capital’s invest­ment stra­tegy, which has alre­ady been successfully imple­men­ted in the past. This is based on part­ner­ships with passio­nate entre­pre­neurs and invest­ments in profi­ta­ble, fast-growing compa­nies in Western Europe with sales between EUR 15 and 250 million.

Focus Germany
Germany is a key target market for the new fund due to its fast-growing IT sector and its signi­fi­cant health­care sector, which is one of the largest indus­tries in the coun­try with around seven million employees.

With the new fund, Keen­sight intends to make grea­ter use of its exten­sive expe­ri­ence in support­ing very fast-growing compa­nies in the inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion of their busi­ness models, its in-depth sector exper­tise and inter­na­tio­nal network in the IT/tech and health­care sectors, its successful coope­ra­tion with start-up entre­pre­neurs in a spirit of part­ner­ship, and its flexi­ble struc­tu­ring of invest­ments in this country.

Keensight’s team consists of 30 experts with eleven diffe­rent natio­na­li­ties, which conti­nues to focus on invest­ments in Western Europe in the range of 20 to 200 million euros. The indus­try focus is on infor­ma­tion tech­no­logy and health­care. The team alre­ady has many years of exper­tise in this area. In 2016, for exam­ple, Keen­sight acqui­red the bioma­te­ri­als divi­sion of aap Implan­tate AG in this coun­try. Keen­sight specia­li­zes in part­ne­ring with estab­lished compa­nies with high growth poten­tial and takes a flexi­ble approach that allows for both majo­rity and mino­rity investments.

Since its incep­tion 20 years ago, the team has inves­ted in 52 compa­nies and successfully comple­ted 37 exits, gene­ra­ting a total gross inter­nal rate of return (IRR) of 39% and an average gross multi­ple of 2.8. Keensight’s port­fo­lio compa­nies have achie­ved average annual reve­nue growth of 22% over the past five years and an average EBITDA margin of 26% in 2018.

Jean-Michel Beghin (photo), Mana­ging Part­ner at Keen­sight Capi­tal, said: “With this €1 billion fund, Keen­sight Capi­tal conso­li­da­tes its posi­tion as one of the leading growth finan­ciers in Europe. The capi­tal raised will support us in our contin­ued deve­lo­p­ment and allow us to streng­then both our team and our deal pipe­line. The capi­tal raise was a great success and demons­tra­tes the value our inves­tors see in our diffe­ren­tia­ted posi­tio­ning and the disci­pline of our team. We are plea­sed to have the support of our long-time inves­tors, on the one hand, and the addi­tion of new inves­tors to the fund, on the other.”

Park Hill served as Keensight’s place­ment agent.

About Keen­sight Capital
Keen­sight Capi­tal, one of the leading Euro­pean growth finan­ciers in the buyout sector, supports entre­pre­neurs in imple­men­ting their growth stra­te­gies. For 20 years, the Keen­sight team has used its know­ledge of corpo­rate finance and growth indus­tries to make long-term invest­ments in profi­ta­ble compa­nies with high growth poten­tial and reve­nues of between €15 million and €250 million.
Based on exper­tise in the Infor­ma­tion Technology/ Inter­net and Healthcare/ Well­ness sectors, Keen­sight iden­ti­fies the best invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties in Europe and works closely with manage­ment teams to deve­lop and imple­ment their stra­te­gic objec­ti­ves. www.keensightcapital.com