We invest in profitable, mid-market growth businesses with the goal to become market leaders while delivering strong returns for all stakeholders.
Investing in partnerships, people & growth
Our Approach
We are one of Australia’s most experienced investment managers with eight funds since 1984. We work flexibly to achieve shareholder objectives and to align interests, particularly with founders.
We pride ourselves on efficient decision-making and deal execution. Regardless of our ownership position, Advent leaves the day-to-day operations to the management teams.
Our Value-Add
A Founder’s objectives determine the structure of our investment. We provide a partial liquidity event for Founders while still enabling them to retain material equity upside while partnering with us.
Sometimes Founders have other objectives, such as acquiring another company or raising capital to continue growing their business. We work with Founders to determine the most beneficial structure that meets all shareholder objectives.
With an extensive network across businesses and industries, we collaborate with Founders to develop a strategic plan and provide execution support.
As an ‘Advent-backed’ company, you gain the ability to attract top management talent and board members, as well as introduce attractive incentives for key executives.
Secure access to our network within the banking community for competitive lending packages. We also provide access to follow-on funding to accelerate growth.
Completing more than 50 acquisitions since 2005, we work with our portfolio companies to maximise opportunity, expand the business, and ultimately, position for a successful exit event.
We’ve helped founders build businesses for some time now. Along the way, we have compiled toolkits, built an extensive network of contacts, and established knowledge libraries for you to leverage as we work together to accelerate growth.
We can help guide you through setting strategic priorities, go-to-market plans, operational structure, HR, and financial initiatives, as well as prepare you for ‘corporatisation’.
Investment Philosophy
We take a pragmatic and collaborative approach to investing in partnerships. We earn the trust of founders through our strong values, honest advice, reliability, and our willingness to share resources and insights to get things done. By working together with founders, we can build successful, industry-leading, growth businesses
Investor Criteria
We invest in a diverse range of businesses across four key industries where we have deep experience and demonstrated success – healthcare, consumer markets, education & training, and proven technology. However, we are open to review opportunities in any leading, profitable, growing company with proprietary products or services.
Existing annual operating profit should be in excess of $4 million, with an enterprise value of between $30 million and $200 million. Companies should have a clear path to growth over the investment period of three to five years.
Our ownership position has ranged from 40% to 90%, but we are an active, lead investor regardless of our ownership. We generally invest equity of between $15 million and $100 million.
We look for companies that operate in a growth market, that have a clear, proven strategy, and with potential and a pathway to quickly increase company size.
We typically invest when a company is seeking generational and shareholder liquidity, working capital for growth, and/or financing strategic acquisitions. We also invest in management buy-outs (MBOs) and buy-ins (MBIs), or spin-offs from larger corporations or government authorities.
We invest in privately-owned companies across our four key industries in Australia and New Zealand. We look for businesses with a strong market position, sources of competitive advantage, and growth in revenues and profitability. We help them scale further to enter the next level of success.
By taking a long-term approach when investing, we aim to build leading businesses for the next owners. We have no preferred exit path and generally look to sell within five years of our investment. We have extensive experience with trade sales, secondary sales to new investors and IPOs.
Why Us?
Our actions speak louder than our words. Take a look at how we have supported and assisted our portfolio companies over the years.