Thomas H. Lee Partners LP (THL) has agreed to buy San Mateo, Calif. and UK-based enterprise open-source software provider Alfresco Software.
The eighteen-year-old company helps digital business manage and automate content centric processes quickly and at a low cost. The firm has raised a total of $68.5 million in four rounds of funding from backers including Sapphire Ventures, Accel Partners and Mayfield Fund. It serves over 1,300 customers including networking hardware giant Cisco Systems Inc., Bank of NY Mellon, Liberty Mutual, Capital One and the U.S. Department of Navy and NASA.
In 2013, Alfresco hired Doug Dennerline as its Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in efforts to guide the firm towards its next stage of growth as a public company. Given a variety of factors including the timing of the IPO market, the company decided it would consider other options to return investment to its backers. During that period, Dennerline doubled down on initiatives set to boost the company’s bottom line, including scaling its channel efforts an introducing a new partner program in 2016.
The Boston-based private equity firm, which makes longer term investments, will likely be focused on operational transformation and growth acceleration at the SaaS company. THL invests in middle market growth companies in four key sectors including Business & Financial Services, Consumer & Retail, Healthcare, and Media, Information Services & Technology.
“We are very excited about this new partnership with Alfresco,” said Laura Grattan, Managing Director at THL. “Alfresco is an innovative leader in content management and process automation solutions, operating in a large, underserved market. Their modern, cloud-native platform is the preferred technology for companies that are carrying out successful digital transformations, making this a highly attractive investment opportunity for THL. Alfresco has an outstanding reputation for enabling customers to collaborate more effectively, optimize business processes, and strengthen compliance, and we look forward to working closely with their talented team to help the Company execute its go-forward strategy and accelerate growth.”
Terms of the deal, set to close in the first quarter of 2018, were not disclosed.
