Thrive, a provider of cybersecurity, cloud and IT managed services, reached a definitive agreement for a strategic investment from Berkshire Partners and existing investor Court Square Capital Partners. Concurrent with this investment, founding investor, MC Partners, will sell its remaining stake in the company. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
“Over the past decade, we’ve built a market-leading company with a wide array of technology capabilities. With the new strategic investment from Berkshire and Court Square, we will continue scaling to meet the complex needs of the industries we serve,” Bill McLaughlin, president of Thrive, said. “We are excited to partner with two firms that understand our business and mission of enabling our customers to increase business efficiencies through standardization, scalability and automation to deliver exceptional technology returns on investment.”
“Thrive’s impressive leadership team has built a remarkable organization, and we are thrilled to begin our partnership alongside Court Square,” Candice Corvetti, managing director at Berkshire Partners, said.
“The complexity of the IT and cybersecurity challenges that companies face today have never been greater,” Marcus Dodyk, principal at Berkshire Partners, said. “These tailwinds and the need for effective IT and cybersecurity services will continue to create opportunities for exceptional, customer-first MSP/MSSPs like Thrive.”
“We believe in the continued success of Thrive, which has executed against its growth objectives as the company continues to scale both organically and inorganically,” Matt Dennett, partner at Court Square, said.
“Our additional investment underscores our belief in the company,” Jeff Vogel, managing partner at Court Square, said. “We are thrilled to continue working with Thrive’s exceptional management team and partner with Berkshire, who brings a wealth of IT investing experience and expertise.”
“At each investor stage through Thrive’s evolution we’ve more than tripled the scale and capabilities of the company,” Rob Stephenson, CEO of Thrive, said. “This is a truly world class company and management team that is positioned to do the same in the next chapter.”
Debt financing for the transaction is being provided by a group of lenders, agented by Alliance Bernstein. Lazard acted as lead financial advisor to Thrive and Moelis also acted as an advisor to Thrive. Guggenheim Securities served as exclusive financial advisor to Berkshire Partners.