PeopleConnect Holdings, Inc., an Affiliate of H.I.G. Capital, Completes Acquisition of Classmates
SAN FRANCISCO – October 22, 2015 – H.I.G. Capital, LLC (“H.I.G.”), a leading global private equity investment firm with $19 billion of equity capital under management, is pleased to announce that its portfolio company PeopleConnect Holdings, Inc. (“PeopleConnect”) completed a strategic investment in Classmates, Inc. (“Classmates”). Classmates operates the leading online high school reconnection social network in the United States. The Classmates transaction becomes PeopleConnect’s second acquisition following the investment in Intelius, Inc. (“Intelius”) in July. Intelius is a leading provider of people search and related products to consumers online.
While the two companies will operate as separate divisions of PeopleConnect, there are meaningful revenue synergies that both Intelius and Classmates will benefit from going forward. The partnership of Classmate’s one-of-a-kind social network with Intelius’ proprietary people search technology platform creates an unparalleled experience for users of both services.
Abani Heller, CEO of Classmates says, “We look forward to working together with Intelius to continue to provide extraordinary value to both companies’ members and customers.”
“We are excited about the partnership with Classmates,” says Intelius CEO Prakash Kondepudi. “The strategic alliance between and data combination of these two companies offers a compelling platform for future growth and will enhance the service offering and experience of our customers.”
Elliot Maluth, Managing Director at H.I.G. Capital, commented, “We are very excited to partner with the management teams of Classmates and Intelius. The transaction brings together two long-standing businesses in the online people search space and enables users of both services to connect unlike anywhere else on the web.”
About Classmates
Founded in 1995 and headquartered in Seattle, Washington, Classmates operates the leading online social network service in the United States for bringing high school alumni together. Classmates serves over 70 million members and enables its users to find and reconnect with high school friends. In addition to facilitating connections with high school friends, Classmates also features the largest library of digitized yearbooks available anywhere on the Internet, with over 300,000 yearbooks available online to help members reconnect, reminisce, engage, and plan reunions with their classmates.
About Intelius
Founded in 2003 and headquartered in Bellevue, Washington, Intelius provides information about people, their histories, and their connections to people, places, and organizations. Services offered include people search (e.g., finding contact information, residence history, employment, education, and other background information on people of interest), reverse people lookup (by phone number, e-mail, and social network), background checks, and identity theft protection services. Customers can access information through one-time purchases or ongoing subscriptions. Intelius has a robust and proprietary technology platform that gathers over 20 billion public records from a large network of publicly and commercially-available sources and assigns such records to more than 250 million unique profiles in the United States.
About H.I.G. Capital
H.I.G. is a leading global private equity and alternative assets investment firm with $19 billion of equity capital under management.* Based in Miami, and with offices in New York, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco, and Atlanta in the U.S., as well as international affiliate offices in London, Hamburg, Madrid, Milan, Paris and Rio de Janeiro, 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:
- H.I.G.’s equity funds invest in management buyouts, recapitalizations and corporate carve-outs of both profitable as well as underperforming manufacturing and service businesses.
- H.I.G.’s debt funds invest in senior, unitranche and junior debt financing to companies across the size spectrum, both on a primary (direct origination) basis, as well as in the secondary markets. H.I.G. is also a leading CLO manager, through its WhiteHorse family of vehicles, and manages a publicly traded BDC, WhiteHorse Finance.
- Other H.I.G. funds invest in various real assets, including real estate and shipping.
Since its founding in 1993, H.I.G. has invested in and managed more than 200 companies worldwide. The firm's current portfolio includes more than 100 companies with combined sales in excess of $30 billion. For more information, please refer to the H.I.G. website at www.hig.com.
* Based on total capital commitments to funds managed by H.I.G. Capital and its affiliates.