by afsheen | Feb 1, 2016 | Blog, News
According to PEHub : “Cytovance® Biologics, Inc. (“Cytovance”), a Great Point Partners (“GPP”) I, LP portfolio company and leading biopharmaceutical contract development manufacturing company (CDMO), announced today that it has been acquired by Hepalink USA Inc. (“Hepalink”) for $205.68M in cash. Through the Cytovance acquisition, Hepalink USA Inc. and its parent company Shenzhen Hepalink Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. add a leading biologics CDMO to its current U.S. operations. Cytovance manufactures protein and antibody drugs for biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies throughout the world. “This transaction expands our ability to develop and grow both our domestic and international businesses and will accelerate our current expansion plans in our Oklahoma City facilities,” said Mr. Darren Head, President and Chief Executive Officer of Cytovance. He added, “Great Point Partners has been an outstanding private equity partner that arranged debt financings enabling growth, helped us recruit senior executives, and that provided Dr. Bernhard Hampl, former CEO of Sandoz USA, from their CEO Advisory Board as Co-Chairman.” The press release can be...
by afsheen | Dec 1, 2015 | Blog, News
According to the Wall Street Journal: ” Heaven Hill Brands, the privately held owner of Evan Williams Bourbon, said Thursday it acquired fast-growing Deep Eddy Vodka, which has doubled its volume annually since its introduction in 2010. The Bardstown, Ky.-based liquor company declined to disclose terms of the deal. Deep Eddy has been on the market since at least May and was valued by an analyst at between $165 million and $300 million. Deep Eddy posted a 130% increase in volume to 330,000 nine-liter cases last year, according to industry tracker Impact Databank. Heaven Hill said Deep Eddy has grown to more than 500,000 cases today. “It’s a fast-growing brand that we believe is not anywhere close to having tapped its potential in what is still the largest alcohol beverage segment in the industry,” said Max Shapira, Heaven Hill’s president. Mr. Shapira said Deep Eddy would operate as an independent company within Heaven Hill and continue to be overseen by its current president, Eric Dopkins. Distribution and production will be managed in Texas where Deep Eddy is based…” More details on the acquisition and...
by Tom | Sep 26, 2014 | Blog
The days and weeks following the conclusion and public announcement of Alibaba have been helpful as expected in helping Kabam CEO and founder Kevin Chou and the Kabam team broaden awareness for the game company’s capabilities and potential. Media including our great 50 Cal neighbors at VentureBeat have given updated treatments of Kabam’s positioning and Alibaba’s positioning. Bottom up equity public investors have so many points of reference available to them in relation to Alibaba. On one hand there are those minds who upon awareness of the Alibaba IPO may have been tempted to project Alibaba as the prime investment vehicle to allocate money to high quality Chinese related info-tech-media-commerce. Some on CNBC have speculated about the company’s future ability to acquire companies. This helps grease some investors imaginations or point to option valuation thinking for more formal investors. At the same time, Kevin has talked about (and even written on LinkedIn) how painstaking the entire process was to meet, engage with, and educate Alibaba team members in order to put the company in position to decide whether or not to forge a partnership in the form of investment. People who are new to investing in corporate equities can broaden their awareness of what it is like for acquisitive companies like Alibaba, Google, Apple, Facebook and many others to spend time and energy pursuing an investment or acquisition by reading Kevin’s post...
by Tom | Mar 6, 2014 | Blog, News
Today Digital Ocean announced that it closed it’s Series A venture capital equity financing round led by Andreesen Horowitz. IA Ventures had invested in the Digital Ocean’s prior equity round during 2013 and participated again along with TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington’s CrunchFund. The $37 million round comes after DO raised just over $3M in equity in the summer of 2013 and augmented that with a significant volume of venture leasing. Digital Ocean’s server growth follows the company’s popularity among users and the availability of equipment leasing for IT gear. Now that the round of equity is closed and announced readers will see many more charts and references to Digital Ocean’s server counts, popularity among developers and competitive positioning relative to Rackspace, Amazon cloud services, Google Compute Engine and others. Fountain Partners congratulates Ben, Moisey, Karl and Larry on all their efforts to build a great product for...
by Tom | Sep 26, 2012 | Blog, News
According to Inc. magazine Accolade, Inc. has been ranked the number one fastest growing healthcare company over the last three years on the 2012 Inc. 500. Overall, Accolade ranked thirty-third on the 2012 Inc. 500 list of America’s fastest growing companies. The 2012 Inc. 500|5000 is an exclusive listing of the nation’s fastest growing private companies ranked according to revenue growth percentage when comparing 2008 to 2011. Accolade ranked 33rd overall in the 2012 Inc. 500 survey. Accolade provides an innovative employee benefit that simplifies healthcare complexity for the employees of large employers. Each employee and their family get their own professional Accolade Health Assistant who knows them, knows their benefits, and helps them navigate the healthcare system. The personal connections Accolade Health Assistants nurture with each family result in healthier and more productive employees, greater employee satisfaction and commitment, and significantly lower healthcare costs for their...