Mobile Home Parks, Xenter Funding, and More (The Week-in-Review, May 08—14, 2021)
An Orem company spends over $70 million to buy two mobile home parks in the Minnesota; Xenter closes $12 million Series A round of funding; Fortem Technologies lands DHS test contract; and more.
Prior to last week I had never heard of Havenpark Communities or its predecessor Havenpark Capital.
Nevertheless, Orem, Utah-based Havenpark is an investment company that acquired two Mobile Home Parks in Minnesota in the past two weeks for a reported $71 million.
According to SWnewsmedia, Havenpark purchased Brandondale Chaska Mobile Home Park in Chaska, Minnesota for $40 million in late April.
Separately, the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal reported this week that Havenpark had purchased the Blaine International Village trailer park in Blaine, Minnesota for $30 million.
These two manufactured home parks have nearly 1,000 home sites between them:
To be clear, there is no news or press room on the Havenpark website nor any Havenpark press releases that I can find on the Internet, which is fine. To each his/her own.
And when I tried calling the company earlier this week, all I got was a recording.
But $71 million? Yeah, it got my attention.
{NOTE: If any readers have any insights into Havenpark, please drop me a line. Thx.}
Xenter Lands $12 Million Series A Funding
While I was making final preparations for last Friday’s Week-in-Review write-up for Deseret Business Watch, Salt Lake City-based Xenter distributed a news release that did not hit my radar until after-the-fact.
However, the announcement was certainly newsworthy, so I’m including it here now.
Specifically, Xenter announced last Friday it has closed on a $12 million Series A round of funding.
When asked for additional details about the funding, a company spokeswoman wrote:
“… Not VC led - all private and highly strategic individuals with a strong and vested interest (in Xenter).”
Fair enough.
The release also announced that four “industry leaders” from the medical, healthcare, medical device, and pharmaceuticals industries had joined Xenter’s board of directors. And it’s an impressive list.
Although Xenter has not announced what it is doing yet, exactly, its first product will apparently
“… combine the function of multiple existing devices but will also revolutionize the field of interventional medicine by producing valuable Physical Intelligence data and enabling advanced Artificial Intelligence solutions, leading to improved patient outcomes while reducing the cost, complexity and invasiveness of cardiac procedures.”
By way of background, I’ve known Richard J. Linder* (Xenter’s chairman, CEO and founder) for close to two decades, back to his first entrepreneurial venture as a founder and executive of Rubicon Medical.
Rich is way smart, with over 100 U.S. patents and patent applications under his belt, with several successful medical device companies to his credit, and he has formed and/or led several companies and organizations in the healthcare space during his career.
So if he’s behind Xenter, I would not bet against Rich.
Fortem Technologies Lands Three-State SkyDome System Test with the US. Dept. of Homeland Security
In the March 26th issue of Deseret Business Watch I reported that Fortem Technologies had landed a $15 million strategic investment from the Japanese keiretsu Toshiba.
Turns out that this past week Fortem announced it has been awarded a contract by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Unfortunately, it’s my experience that many of the news releases produced, edited, and/or approved by the U.S. government are terribly written, not because they’re produced by bad writers. Rather it often seems that such announcements do very little to actually tell you what’s newsworthy. Anyway … enough complaining for now.
From what I can tell from the Fortem release itself and then digging into various DHS materials and websites, it appears that Fortem is going to be working with the Science and Technology Directorate of the Dept. of Homeland Security to explore, test and evaluate systems that might be used to help protect the U.S. border with Canada from illegal and unwanted intrusion by various aircraft.
For its part, Fortem will be implementing its SkyDome System, along with its land- and drone-based TrueView Radar systems, in three different states (Michigan, Montana, and North Dakota) to simulate four different terrains and environments potentially used by terrorists, smugglers and other “bad actors” to penetrate American airspace from Canada, namely
Flat lowland plains,
Maritime settings,
Mountainous regions, and
Urban settings.
As part of this one-year Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA), Fortem will work directly with DHS, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, and other federal entities to “detect, track, and identify aerial-based threats, including unmanned aircraft systems” (aka, drones) through Air Domain Awareness.
And although not stated in the press release, sure seems to me that such data could also be used by the U.S. military for defensive purposes at a minimum.
So … yeah … this sounds like a pretty big deal for Fortem. Congrats.
BTW: If you’ve not seen Fortem’s “drone killer” tech in action before, it’s a kick-in-the-pants to watch. See what I mean with this 18-month-old YouTube video.
Filevine Acquires Outlaw
Last week, Salt Lake City-based Filevine announced it had acquired Brooklyn, New York-based Outlaw.
For its part, Filevine defines itself as providing attorneys and legal professionals with “enterprise-grade case management software” that is currently used by over 25,000 “legal elites.”
Conversely, Outlaw is a market leader in “contract lifecycle management.”
No financial terms were disclosed by either party.
Utah’s Drought Conditions Worsen, so Governor Spencer Cox Issues a State of Emergency Executive Order
If you did not know, Utah is in the midst of a drought.
Again.
Kind of not surprising if you live in the second driest state in all of America, right?
Anyway … it’s true.
To get the details on drought conditions in Utah, you can visit this webpage from the state’s Department of Natural Resources to get the up-to-the-minute details. And if my math is correct, here’s what things were like within the State of Deseret (as of May 11th) —
Exceptional Drought conditions: 58.83% of the state
Extreme Drought conditions (or worse): 31.37% of the state
Severe Drought conditions (or worse): 1.81% of the state
Moderate Drought conditions (or worse): 7.99% of the state
In other words, 100% of the state of Utah is currently at Moderate Drought conditions or worse.
So … what does this mean?
Based upon the latest data, Governor Spencer Cox issued a new Executive Order last week to declare a State of Emergency regarding Utah’s continuing drought conditions.
This is Gov. Cox’ second EO tied to the current drought, with the first one issued in mid-march.
This State of Emergency order will remain in place for 30 days unless extended by the Legislature.
Pluralsight Purchase Completed; It’s now a Private Company — Again
Mea culpa is about all I can really write.
Unfortunately, the truth is that I completely missed the fact that the acquisition of Draper, Utah-based Pluralsight closed over a month ago. UGH!
My only excuse is that the news dropped on my birthday. But still … (David facepalm’s himself).
So … in summary … Pluralsight announced on April 6 that it had been acquired by Vista Equity Partners for $22.50 per share. This placed Pluralsight’s valuation at $3.8 billion.
As a result of the acquisition, Pluralsight shares stopped trading and are no longer available for sale/purchase via any public stock market.
To my knowledge, this is the largest acquisition of a publicly traded company in Utah (with the intent to take that company private).
Presuming that the history of such public company acquisitions by private equity/investor firms holds true to course, I suspect that we might see Pluralsight remain within the Vista portfolio for five to seven years before it is sold or taken public.
Again.
* — Rich Linder is a former client for public relations and investor relations services, two times, over 10 years ago. For the record, I do not have a formal/professional relationship with Rich today.
ICYMI: Deseret Business Watch Needs Your Help
Consider this a postscript, but earlier this week I launched a short online survey asking for feedback from you, the readers of Deseret Business Watch.
My goal? Simply to find out what companies you would like to see highlighted in an in-depth Feature Story by DBW.
If you haven’t seen or provided such feedback yet, I invite you to do so now by clicking on the link above and completing the survey. It should take 5—10 minutes.
Thank you.
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About the Author
David Politis is a Marketing Mercenary, which is a fancy way of saying that organizations and individuals hire him to solve their marketing problems. To learn more, please feel free to visit David’s LinkedIn Profile or the website for his business: The David Politis Company. If you have a story idea for him (or would just like to connect), you can reach him at me@davidpolitis.com.