William Blair acted as financial advisor to AVI-SPL, Inc. (AVI-SPL), a portfolio company of H.I.G. Capital (H.I.G.), in connection with its sale to Marlin Equity Partners (Marlin Equity). Marlin will combine the company with their smaller existing portfolio company, Whitlock Corp. (Whitlock), and will become the majority shareholder, with H.I.G. maintaining a minority equity stake. The combined company will have over $1.3 billion in revenue and 3,400 employees serving the audio and video collaboration solutions and services market.
Transaction Highlights
- Deep sector expertise: AVI-SPL and H.I.G. were attracted to William Blair's extensive knowledge and experience within enterprise IT and IT services. In addition, William Blair's strong buyer relationships provided valuable insight into the most likely strategic and financial acquirers.
- Positioning excellence: The transaction team effectively positioned AVI-SPL's industry leadership with its unrivaled services offering, technical expertise, and global scale, reflected by a blue chip customer base across all major end-markets, and the company's strong financial performance.
- Trusted guidance: William Blair was integrally involved throughout each step of the transaction process, collaborating closely with management in developing marketing materials, educating prospective buyers, coordinating due diligence, and advising on process strategy and tactics.
About the Companies
AVI-SPL is the leading digital workplace collaboration solutions provider, allowing enterprises to leverage technology to transform the way global employees and customers interact to drive increased workplace efficiency and improved business outcomes. AVI-SPL has highly trained and certified system engineers in offices throughout the United States, Canada, and EMEA in addition to an international network of solution providers in 30 countries.
Whitlock is a provider of audiovisual (AV) and video collaboration (VC) solutions. The company's primary services include strategic planning, roadmap consulting, enterprise management, workplace integration and managed support. Additional expertise includes “as a service" (aaS) opportunities as well as integrated design and deployment of furniture, surroundings, technologies and tools through their partnership with Herman Miller. Whitlock teams serve customers across a wide variety of industries, including the financial, high-tech, energy, healthcare, higher education, legal and federal government sectors. Founded in 1956, Whitlock is based in Richmond, Virgina with additional offices across the U.S.
H.I.G. is a leading global private equity and alternative assets investment firm with $37 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.
Marlin Equity Partners is a global investment firm with over $6.7 billion of capital under management. The firm is focused on providing corporate parents, shareholders and other stakeholders with tailored solutions that meet their business and liquidity needs. Marlin invests in businesses across multiple industries where its capital base, industry relationships and extensive network of operational resources significantly strengthen a company's outlook and enhance value. Since its inception, Marlin, through its group of funds and related companies, has successfully completed over 150 acquisitions. The firm is based in Los Angeles, California with an additional office in London.
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