Temasek invests in Francisco-backed BluJay

Following the deal, BluJay will have around $500m at its disposal to invest in bolt-on acquisitions as part of its international expansion plans, according to a statement. Francsico will remain the company's largest shareholder.

The transaction comes five years after Francisco first invested in the business and 16 months after it acquired Michigan-based logistics software-as-a-service provider LeanLogistics. According to publicly available documents, BluJay has converted a pre-tax loss of £740,000 for the two quarters prior to Francisco's initial investment into an adjusted operating profit of $19.5m in the year ending March 2016.

BluJay refinanced its debt in May 2016 in order to fund the LeanLogistics acquisition. TPG Speciality Lending Europe led a syndicate of lenders, that provided term loans including dollar-denominated facilities of $100m, sterling-denominated facilities of £13.7m and euro-denominated facilities of €67.5m.

Previous funding
Francisco acquired BluJay (then known as Kewill) in a £102.7m take-private deal in July 2012.

Company
Founded in 1972, Manchester-headquartered BluJay is a logistics software and consultancy business. Its customers include food and beverage companies, logistics services and freight forwarders. It rebranded from Kewill Group to BluJay in March 2017, following the acquisition of LeanLogistics.

The group generated revenues of $93.3m in the year ending March 2016, with adjusted EBITDA of $21.6m, according to the aforementioned documents.

People
BlueJay Solutions – Doug Braun (CEO).
Francisco Partners – Deep Shah (co-president).

Advisers
Equity – Debevoise & Plimpton (legal).
Company – Arma Partners (corporate finance); Jefferies (corporate finance); Fried Frank Harris Shriver & Jacobson (legal).

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• Topics
• Expansion
• UK / Ireland
• Technology
• United Kingdom
• Francisco Partners