Black Dragon Capital℠ Portfolio Company Grass Valley Completes $220 Million Strategic Recapitalization
Milestone Recapitalization Positions Black Dragon Capital℠ to Deliver Value, Allowing Grass Valley to Extend Market Leadership and Accelerate Growth.
BOCA RATON, Fla., March 21, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Black Dragon Capital's portfolio company, Grass Valley, recently announced the successful completion of a $220 million strategic refinancing led by investment funds managed by Morgan Stanley Private Credit. The strategic recapitalization will both strengthen the company's balance sheet and refinance existing debt, while further positioning Grass Valley to lead the reimagination of the future workflow for media through its Grass Valley Media Universe (GVMU) suite of solutions.
Since 2020, Grass Valley has been under the multi-phased investment firm Black Dragon's leadership. During this time the company has experienced a drastic turnaround:
Adjusted EBITDA increased by US$77m.
Revenue remained stable despite dramatically lower SKU count
Gross Margins increased by 15%
Recurring revenue increased by 33%
Software and services increase of 59%
These results were achieved thanks to Black Dragon Capital℠ and its long history of creating and investing in market leading companies. It's unique, operationally led approach with deep domain expertise, combined with a global network of diverse professionals who have extensive industry, operational, and investment success have been fundamental to the firm's consistent track record of delivering well-above market returns. In addition, the implementation of their proprietary Black Dragon Toolkit℠, has helped drive a customized strategy according to Grass Valley's existing core assets, revenue streams and resources.
"Implementing the Black Dragon Toolkit℠ materially accelerated our business transformation, leading to vastly improved financial results which positioned us to complete this strategically important refinancing," said Jon Wilson, President of Grass Valley. "We look forward to continuing to partner with the Black Dragon team as we accelerate our growth strategy and positioning Grass Valley to continue leading the future of live media production for our customers."
In alignment with BDC's goal of enabling growth opportunities for its companies, the recapitalization serves to extend the momentum from an incredibly successful 2023, both operationally and financially, for Grass Valley.
Operationally, the company completed its planned business transformation, having simplified the organizational structure, made key new appointments across the leadership team, optimized its global footprint, and focused the product portfolio to align with the changing media landscape. The business transformation allowed the company to further extend its investments in software and integrated hardware solutions as part of the most advanced cloud-native media platform in the industry. Through these investments customers are now realizing savings and workflow agility while producing some of the most watched content in the world.
Financially, the business delivered a tremendous year in 2023. This included growing revenue, with the strongest year since 2020 for live production and networking infrastructure hardware, and a significant increase in recurring revenue with AMPP revenues nearly doubling over last year. In addition, earnings increased over 100% while the company hired hundreds globally and saw its patent portfolio surge significantly due to its continued investments in innovation.
As media companies continue to navigate the disruptive forces impacting their businesses, they face mounting challenges to deliver operational efficiencies across the media supply chain. The expertise of Black Dragon Capital has allowed Grass Valley to continue leading the future of live production solutions by enabling streamlined workflows through the Grass Valley Media Universe, which includes the AMPP open ecosystem delivering significant advantages with flexibility across on-prem, hybrid or cloud native deployment models.
"The media industry is still in the early stages of defining the future of live production workflows and this investment further allows Grass Valley to accelerate our market leadership in support of this industry-wide transition," said Grass Valley's Chairman and CEO, Louis Hernandez Jr. "With our surging performance from 2023, and now a stronger balance sheet, we intend to accelerate innovation across our entire portfolio, most notably in the AMPP ecosystem, as we begin to scale deployments across our global customer base."
By completing this recapitalization, Grass Valley will now accelerate its investment across the combined GVMU integrated hardware and software solutions, enabled by AMPP, further extending its leadership across live, networking, content production, and playout workflows.
About Black Dragon Capital℠
Black Dragon Capital℠
Black Dragon Capital℠ (BDC) is a global, multi-phased investment firm focused on advanced technologies in high growth segments that strengthen economic stability within communities. The firm was founded and led by a diverse team with a combination of intense operating experience, community impact focus, and a track record of successful investing. They work closely with entrepreneurs to build market leading companies using their proprietary Black Dragon Toolkit℠ and focus on high potential early stage, and mid-market technology companies in growth sectors disrupted by digitization.
Media Contact or Inquiries:
María Florencia Viana
Marketing Manager, Black Dragon Capital
mviana@blackdragoncap.com
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SOURCE Black Dragon Capital
