BV Investment Partners has acquired Becklar, the parent company of sister companies, Freeus and AvantGuard.
Freeus manufactures and sells mobile (home and away from home), two-way voice, personal emergency response systems (PERS) to dealers across the United States. Freeus was the first mobile PERS provider to use Wi-Fi location technology to locate a subscriber and its products provide fast access to trained and certified emergency care specialists.
AvantGuard is a wholesale monitoring company providing event response to the security, fire, PERS, and IoT industries. The company’s response times for critical events averages less than 10 seconds and, according to the company, is among the fastest reaction times in the industry.
Becklar – the name is inspired by the Bechler River in Yellowstone National Park – is based in Ogden, Utah. BV partnered on this transaction with Becklar’s founder and chief executive officer Josh Garner. Mr. Garner is maintaining a sizeable equity stake in Becklar and plans to remain highly engaged with the business.
“Driven by the quality and dedication of the Becklar team, investment in technology, and the good fortune of positive market trends, Becklar has grown rapidly,” said Mr. Garner. “Together with BV we are pursuing several organic growth opportunities, including the overall growth in the mobile PERS market, developing new products and services, meeting emerging monitoring needs, and expanding our software development capabilities for a number of end markets. We also plan to pursue sizeable M&A opportunities that had previously been out of our reach without a partner like BV.”
“We have gotten to know Josh and the Becklar team over the last several years; they are a terrific group and have established a leading position in the wholesale monitoring and PERS industries through careful investment in technology, process and people,” said Justin Garrison, a managing director of BV. “We’re looking forward to working in partnership with them to execute on a compelling growth strategy.”
BV Investment Partners makes investments in companies that are EBITDA positive and are active in the business services, software, and IT services industries. In February 2020, the firm held a first and final close of BV Investment Partners Fund X LP at its hard cap of $1.1 billion. The firm’s earlier fund closed with $750 million of capital in 2017. BV was founded in 1983 and is headquartered in Boston.
“For a number of years, we have been working to execute on an investment thesis around wholesale monitoring and PERS,” added Mr. Garrison. “These industries provide critical life safety technology and services, and they benefit from a number of growth drivers including demographic tailwinds, the desire of seniors to have the freedom to age in place, IoT adoption, and the trend towards outsourcing commercial and residential monitoring to leading wholesale providers like AvantGuard.”
The Edmonds Group – a St. Louis-based investment bank that specializes in recurring revenue companies – was the financial advisor to Becklar.
Private Equity Professional | July 14, 2020
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