Elysian to reap at least 3.2x on Pebble IPO

Greg Gille
03 December 2019

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The Pebble Group, Elysian Capital's UK-based holding company for branded promotional merchandise businesses Brand Addition and Facilis Group, has listed in a ТЃ176m IPO in London.

The company's shares were admitted to trading on the London Stock Exchange's AIM market on 2 December. The IPO valued the business at £176m and raised £135m in proceeds. An earlier report by the Sunday Times mentioned a target valuation of £220m.

Elysian sold the majority of its shares in the Pebble Group for cash, equal to a 3.2x return on its original investment. Its stake in the business went from around 77% to 13.9% post-listing. The remaining stake represents a further 1.1x return, based on the placing price of 105 pence per share.

The total valuation for Elysian Capital's investment in Pebble amounted to 4.3x cost at the offer price. It is the first exit for Elysian Capital II, which closed on £250m in 2015.

Meanwhile, private lender Beechbrook Capital fully exited its 3.59% stake as part of the IPO.

Grant Thornton was the nominated adviser, while Berenberg was the sole global coordinator and broker for the potential IPO.

Previous funding
HIG Capital sold its stake in UK-based merchandising company Brand Addition to Elysian Capital in 2017. Financial details of the transaction remained undisclosed, though a source close to the situation told Unquote at the time that the deal valued the business at almost £50m. The deal was Elysian's fourth with capital drawn from its second fund, which held a final close on £250m in July 2015.

Elysian then made its second investment into the promotional products sector by buying Facilis, a service provider to distributor businesses in the North American promotional products industry, in 2018.

The merged group (named Pebble) saw turnover increase from £74.1m in 2016 to £99.8m in 2018, according to the company. Pebble has grown adjusted EBITDA from £7.6m to £13.7m over the same period.

Company
Pebble is the parent company of a group of businesses providing products, services and technology to the global promotional products industry. Pebble is headquartered in Manchester, and operates through two differentiated businesses: its promotional product merchandise division, Brand Addition; and software-as-a-service business Facilisgroup, which provides a subscription-based software service to promotional products distributors in North America.

People
Elysian Capital – Ken Terry (CEO).
Pebble Group – Christopher LEE (CEO).