Six Acquisitions and Investments Lead Utah’s Business News from Last Week (The Week-in-Review, May 22—28, 2021)
Utah’s explosive growth continues with at least six significant financial transactions last week, led by a $50MM investment in Scientia Vascular, a Blackstone investment in Walker Edison, and more.
There have been two great things I’ve experienced since launching Deseret Business Watch back in mid-January earlier this year:
Being on the front line of what is the most transformative period in the State of Deseret since Brigham Young and the arrival of the early pioneers in the mid-1800s, and
Learning about all the great “new” companies and people in Utah that are making this transformation reality.
Case in point, Memorial Day holiday weekend be damned, but wow, a lot of deals got closed / announced this past week.
In fact, by my count, at least six acquisitions, mergers, financings, and/or financial transactions were announced between Monday and Friday. And I’m not even sure I know about all of them.
But what I did learn about, I’ll summarize below, in order of significance/importance for you, the readers of DBW, starting with the lead item about one of those Utah-based firms I’d never even heard of before. But I know ‘em now.
Meet Scientia Vascular.
Scientia Vascular Raises $50 Million
Last Thursday, West Valley City, Utah-based Scientia Vascular announced it had raised $50 million of “growth equity financing” from Vivo Capital.
Scientia was founded in 2007 and builds what some might consider to be non-sexy medical devices: guidewires. But that would be like describing a Lamborghini as “just a car.”
In plain English, guidewires are very thin, flexible wires that allow surgeons to perform microsurgeries to repair / treat defects or medical conditions that occur within blood vessels, like removing an occlusion (aka, a blockage) within an artery.
In the video below, two interventional surgeons describe the images shown on monitors as Scientia guidewires are used during surgery.
To be clear, if you’re not a vascular surgeon, medical lingo from the video like “Trans-Femorally” can be a bit tricky to understand.
But what the surgeons in the vid show and explain is that the Scientia guidewires allow them to maneuver tiny medical balloons and stents along, through and past the often wildly convoluted blood vessels in the body so such devices can be used to open blockages and restore critical blood flow.
In addition, it’s clear from their explanations that these surgeons are actually surprised that they can navigate and deliver the stents and balloons along, through and past the different tortuous and tight twists and turns of the different blood vessels without
Seeing the Scientia guidewire move out of place or
Puncture the blood vessel wall(s),
Regardless of how much force, pressure or torque they apply to the guidewire or delivery catheters.
Look … I’m not an M.D. or a healthcare professional. And not counting the handful of times I’ve been operated on, I’ve never been in a surgical suite during a medical procedure.
But I did provide public relations, marketing and investor relations for multiple years to two separate Utah-based medical device companies focused on treating problems caused by cardiovascular disease and defects.
And as a somewhat educated layperson, I can tell you, Scientia has definitely got some winning technologies here, so much so that I don’t know how long it survives as an independent firm before it gets swallowed up:
Either by a major medical device company, or by
A deep pockets private equity firm or investment house that can fund its development and strategic direction forward.
Should be a very interesting ride for Team Scientia. Bravo!
Ready-to-Assemble Furniture Firm, Walker Edison, Receives Significant Minority Investment from Blackstone
A West Jordan, Utah-based furniture company announced last week that it had received a “significant minority investment” from Blackstone Tactical Opportunities, an investment vehicle of the massive financial company Blackstone.
The company in question is 15-year-old Walker Edison, a designer, manufacturer and online seller of ready-to-assemble furniture (aka, RTA).
But if you want to see/purchase what RTA furniture Walker Edison is selling, you’ll need to visit its eCommerce website here (https://walkeredisonshop.com) or one of the websites of an eCommerce partner.
For the record, the news release did not disclose the amount of the Blackstone investment or the ownership position it now has in Walker Edison.
However, a bit of digging uncovered the fact that beyond the minority ownership positions of company founders, Brad Bonham and Matt Davis, Walker Edison has been majority owned by Waltham, Massachusetts-based private equity group, Prospect Hill Growth Partners, since September 2018.
{NOTE: Prior to March 2019, Prospect Hill was known as J.W. Childs Associates.}
Blackrock Neurotech Raises $10 Million Round of Funding to Advance Development of its World-Leading Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) Technology
Salt Lake City-based Blackrock Neurotech, has raised $10 million in funding, led by re.Mind Capital, with participation from Peter Thiel; German entrepreneur, Tim Sievers; and Sorenson Impact's University Venture Fund II.
{NOTE: There is no apparent connection between Blackrock Neurotech and the financial firm, Blackrock.}
Blackrock Neurotech is seen by many as the world’s leading platform for brain-computer interface (BCI) technology, and as such, it has powered a wide range of “firsts” in human BCI applications, including
First to provide tetraplegic patients the ability to control robotic limbs directly from and with the brain; and
First to enable ALS patients, even completely locked-in ones, to communicate again via an auditory speller, directly controlled by their mind.
According to the company news release, Blackrock Neurotech will use the funding to
“… further expand the number of programs on the Blackrock platform – including clinical studies and cutting-edge research – and to continue development of its technology platform to maintain a leading position in the market.”
“To date there have been 30 human patients around the world who are living with a BCI in their head, and 28 of those use Blackrock’s technology,” said Jan Hardorp, founding partner of re.Mind. “The first Blackrock device was implanted (in a human) more than 15 years ago, making their technology the go-to platform for the world's leading teams who are actively building BCI applications.”
According to the company, Blackrock Neurotech is the only company in the world with an implantable “penetrating array” that has been cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use in humans and has nearly 100 electrodes per device.
Talk about science fiction becoming science reality. Crazy, cool stuff!
Warburg Pincus Buys Out Clearlake Capital and Snags a Significant Ownership Stake in NetDocuments
If and when company management decides to accept funding from a PEG (aka, a Private Equity Group), it’s my experience that that company will often stay within the “grasp” of the PEG community as one PEG will often sell all or part of its ownership stake to another PEG after certain financial goals have been achieved.
Unfortunately, it’s almost impossible to keep track of the various machinations within this fairly closed investment community unless you have a scorecard to keep track of the PEG game.
This reality has been played out in multiple Deseret Business Watch stories since early February, was described in the Walker Edison news item above, and is the basis for the news that came out of NetDocuments last week.
Lehi, Utah-based NetDocuments is one of Utah’s oldest technology firms, having been formed back in 1999, and it provides cloud-based content management and productivity solutions to the legal industry, with over 3,100 law firms using its services.
According to Crunchbase, NetDocuments raised $25 million and $5 million in two rounds of venture capital funding in 2014 and 2016, respectively.
Then in March 2017, NetDocuments was acquired by Clearlake Capital Group, a Santa Monica, California-based PEG with over $3 billion in assets under management (AUM), with participation from the then-current NetDocuments management team. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Two years later, NetDocuments received a “significant investment” from another PEG: Cove Hill Partners out of Boston, Massachusetts, a firm with over $1 billion AUM. Here too, financial terms were not disclosed.
Now, some four years after the Clearlake acquisition, NetDocuments has finalized terms to allow Clearlake to sell its ownership position to another PEG.
This time it’s Warburg Pincus, a New York City-based PEG with $60 billion AUM, taking a bite of the apple. Again, financial terms were not disclosed.
A PERSONAL OBSERVATION: Back in 2017, NetDocuments press releases explained that the company had “hundreds of thousands of users across 140 countries.” Conversely, the company’s most recent release says that NetDocuments has “more than 3,150+ enterprise customers worldwide.”
Clearly, the number of users does not equate to the number of customers. But I suspect that since 2017, NetDocuments has experienced enough growth to attract a Warburg Pincus to the table.
Kodiak Cakes Acquired by L Catterton
Park City, Utah-based Kodiak Cakes announced last week it has been acquired by L Catterton, the world’s largest Private Equity Group focused on consumer brands. Financial terms were not disclosed.
In the news release announcing the acquisition, Kodiak Cakes explained that its existing shareholders will continue to hold a significant minority position in the company, including PEGs Sunrise Strategic Partners and Trilantic North America, along with the company’s founders and management team.
{NOTE: Sunrise and Trilantic first invested in Kodiak back in mid-2016. No financial terms were disclosed at the time.}
Sift to Acquire ChargeBack
Salt Lake City-based Chargeback has agreed to be acquired by San Francisco-based Sift.
According to the news release, Sift is a leader in “Digital Trust & Safety.” Conversely, Chargeback is a “pioneer in real-time dispute management for merchants.”
No terms of the agreement were disclosed, nor information about the expected closing date of the acquisition.
Getting Back to a Normal Cadence
On a closing note, I don’t know about you, but holiday weekends tend to mess me up schedule-wise generally. But I have found that this is especially true when travel is involved, such as this past Memorial Day weekend.
What that video doesn’t explain, however, is that I only got to spend 30 minutes on the beach in Panama City, Florida early, early Monday morning.
The rest of the time I was either on an airplane, stuck in an IKEA or Walmart for 12+ hours, loading or unloading a moving truck, or driving said moving truck for six-plus hours from Atlanta, Georgia to Panama City. All within a three-day period. Yeah, not exactly relaxing.
Oh … the things we do for our kids.
The upshot was that this Week-in-Review write-up for the week of May 22—28, 2021 didn’t get wrapped-up and published until this morning — Thursday morning, a week later than it should have been published. UGH!
And apologies.
Anyway … the plan is to be back on schedule starting tomorrow.
So thanks, as always, for your support and understanding as I do my best to fill a crying need in the State of Deseret to stay on top of Utah’s most important and relevant business news each and every week across every sector, region and industry within the state. Thanks.
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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.