Palatine Makes Successful Exit on Acora Investment

We have successfully exited fast-growing IT managed service provider Acora with the company securing a new minority investment from LDC. The exit generated a return of more than 3x the original investment in under three years.

We invested in the technology provider from our Buyout Fund III in March 2020. Since then we have supported the management team’s growth strategy with five acquisitions which have added significant scale and service capability and taken the company’s headcount from 300 to more than 550 people and doubling revenues to over £60m.

Amongst Acora’s most significant strategic acquisitions was the addition in May 2022 of cyber security provider Secrutiny, enabling it to offer a complete end-to-end service to its 300-plus customers around the world at a time of increased cyber security threat.

Based in West Sussex and with offices in London, Birmingham, Milton Keynes and Bath, Acora was founded more than 25 years ago and has won multiple awards for service excellence, included being ranked a Top 10 Managed Service Provider globally. It serves mid-market customers (mainly 500 to 5,000 users), across multiple sectors and locations.

Andy Strickland, Senior Investment Director at Palatine said: “We have enjoyed a strong partnership with David Rabson, CEO at Acora and his leadership team. The business is well-placed to continue its growth journey with LDC and we wish them every success.

“As well as the successful buy and build strategy, during the period of Palatine’s investment a number of key value-enhancing initiatives have been implemented including the  repositioning of the business to focus on customer experience, a digitisation project to automate efficiencies in service delivery, and a significant ongoing ESG project to support talent attraction and retention – which helped the business gain recognition the Sunday Times Best Places to Work programme.”