Alpine Investors’ Cleo Partners with H.I.G. Capital

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Alpine Investors (“Alpine”), a private equity firm focused on software and services businesses, today announced that Cleo Communications (“Cleo”), a global provider of ecosystem integration solutions, is receiving a significant growth investment from an affiliate of H.I.G. Capital (“H.I.G.”), a global private equity and alternative assets investment firm. As part of the partnership, Alpine is exiting its investment in Cleo.

Cleo is a global SaaS provider of enterprise data integration solutions with capabilities across B2B, applications, cloud, and big data integrations through a single platform integration suite, Cleo Integration Cloud. Alpine partnered with Mahesh Rajasekharan in the investment in Cleo in 2012 and appointed him as President and CEO. Over its holding period, through their in-house talent program, Alpine also helped round out Cleo’s leadership team with exceptional executive talent. With this team in place, Cleo successfully grew the business from 30 to 300 employees, and now serves over 4,000 global customers, principally in the manufacturing, retail, logistics & transportation, and wholesale distribution industries.

Since 2012, Cleo has become the global leader of the ecosystem integration software category through investment and innovation. During this time, Cleo completed two strategic add-ons, increased its total addressable market, and shifted the entire product suite to a SaaS-based cloud offering that has become the market standard for ecosystem integration. The team also built out its professional sales and marketing operations, increasing revenue more than five-fold during Alpine’s nine-year investment period. Cleo’s partnership with H.I.G. will provide investment for its next phase of growth and accelerate Cleo’s ecosystem integration category leadership and growth strategy.

“Over the last nine years, Cleo has redefined B2B integration in the cloud, and pioneered the ecosystem integration software category, creating an end-to-end product solution on a single platform, which businesses across industries are rapidly adopting,” said Rajasekharan. “H.I.G. Capital’s deep domain knowledge and shared vision in helping businesses manage rapid growth through cloud integration technology makes them the perfect partner for Cleo’s next phase of growth.”

“Under Mahesh’s people-driven leadership and customer orientation, Cleo has grown into a global market leader,” said Billy Maguy, partner at Alpine. “Cleo’s goal of creating a leading solution for B2B enterprise data has helped businesses gain the supply chain visibility and control they need to scale. We’re excited to watch Cleo continue to provide value and solve challenges for its customers in partnership with H.I.G.”

UBS Securities LLC served as financial advisor and Kirkland & Ellis LLP served as legal counsel to Cleo and Alpine.

About Alpine Investors

Alpine Investors is a people-driven private equity firm that is committed to building enduring companies by working with, learning from, and developing exceptional people. Alpine specializes in investments in middle-market companies in the software and services industries. Its PeopleFirst strategy includes a CEO-in-Residence program which allows Alpine to bring proven leadership to situations where additional or new management is needed post-transaction. Alpine is currently investing out of its $1 billion seventh fund. For more information, visit http://www.alpineinvestors.com.

About Cleo

Cleo is an ecosystem integration software company whose solutions simplify the movement and integration of critical B2B enterprise data, thereby enabling business agility and business flow visibility. The Cleo Integration Cloud (“CIC”) is a cloud-based platform that brings end-to-end integration visibility across API, EDI, and non-EDI integrations and gives technical and business users the confidence and capability to rapidly onboard trading partners, enable integration between applications, and accelerate revenue-generating business processes. Headquartered in Rockford, Illinois, Cleo serves more than 4,000 customers globally with a focus on the manufacturing, wholesale & distribution, and logistics end-markets.

About H.I.G. Capital

H.I.G. is a leading global private equity and alternative assets investment firm with $44 billion of equity capital under management. Based in Miami, and with offices in New York, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Atlanta in the U.S., as well as international affiliate offices in London, Hamburg, Madrid, Milan, Paris, Bogotá, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, H.I.G. specializes in providing both debt and equity capital to small and mid-sized companies, utilizing a flexible and operationally focused/ value-added approach:

1. H.I.G.'s equity funds invest in management buyouts, recapitalizations and corporate carve-outs of both profitable as well as underperforming manufacturing and service businesses.
2. H.I.G.'s debt funds invest in senior, unitranche and junior debt financing to companies across the size spectrum, both on a primary (direct origination) basis, as well as in the secondary markets. H.I.G. is also a leading CLO manager, through its WhiteHorse family of vehicles, and manages a publicly traded BDC, WhiteHorse Finance.
3. H.I.G.'s real estate funds invest in value-added properties, which can benefit from improved asset management practices.

Since its founding in 1993, H.I.G. has invested in and managed more than 300 companies worldwide. The firm's current portfolio includes more than 100 companies with combined sales in excess of $30 billion. For more information, please refer to the H.I.G. website at www.higcapital.com.