Ethos is pleased to announce its investment in People Value, the provider of employee engagement and benefits software solutions to UK companies.
Ethos’ principals and HNW investor base provided equity funding to support the acquisition while senior debt was provided by Harwood Private Capital.
Founded in 2002 by Mike Morgan, People Value has established itself as one of the market’s key providers of software-as-a-service (SaaS) products for organisations looking to improve employee engagement and performance by delivering reward and recognition, benefits and wellbeing solutions. The business has experienced uninterrupted revenue growth for 15 years as a result of continued innovation and customer-centricity.
People Value is headquartered in Wheatley, Oxfordshire, from where it services c. 400 customers from large enterprises to SMEs. In partnering with CEO Andy Caldicott and his long-serving management team, the buyout presents an opportunity to continue to deliver strong growth through product innovation and further investment in sales, marketing and customer success.
Andy Caldicott, CEO, said:
‘I am thrilled that Ethos have invested in People Value and look forward to working with them to pursue our growth plan. Having worked closely with the Ethos team over the course of the transaction, I am confident that they share the same values and ambitions as me and the People Value team.’
Pascal Wittet, Partner at Ethos, commented:
‘The market for technology-led employee engagement solutions is growing at an attractive rate and will become more crucial to organisations in a world of distributed workforces in which working from home is increasingly accepted. Mike, Andy, and the People Value team have built a successful business that is highly regarded by its customers. We look forward to working with Andy and the wider management team to help deliver the next stage of growth and we are delighted to have given our private investors the opportunity to participate in this exciting journey.’
Jerry Wilson, Partner at Harwood Private Capital, commented:
‘We are delighted with the opportunity to support Andy and his team through this next phase of exciting growth. The flexible nature of our capital will allow People Value to continue investing in its platforms to deliver an increasingly broad range of products and services to meet growing demand from its target customer base. It was a pleasure to work with Andy, the Ethos team and the wider transaction stakeholders to deliver a bespoke debt package to support this transaction.’
Richard Hall, Partner at Polestar Corporate Finance, added:
‘Combining a scalable software platform with solid growth fundamentals, People Value unsurprisingly attracted strong interest from both trade and private equity, including, despite its relatively modest current scale, several interested overseas bidders. Ethos quickly got the management team and vendor comfortable with them as a future partner, generating confidence that they would transact swiftly. Ethos was good to its word and responded constructively to help find workable solutions for both parties to complete the transaction to a very tight timetable.’
Ethos was advised on the transaction by BDO (financial), Latitude Consulting (commercial), Polestar (debt advisory) and Harrison Clark Rickerbys (legal).
