Inagural Small Cap Fund Extends Reach to Lower Middle Market And Non-Control Investments
FOSTER CITY, Calif., Jan. 14, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Bertram Capital Management, LLC ("Bertram"), a middle-market private equity firm, today announced the closing of its first fund extension platform, Bertram Ignite I, L.P ("Ignite I") with $260M total capital commitments including the general partner. The Ignite I closing follows the oversubscribed closing of Bertram's fifth flagship fund, Bertram Capital V, L.P ("BC V") in January of 2024. BC V raised a total of $1.6 B inclusive of commmitments from the general partner.
"When we launched Bertram in 2006, our goal was to support lower middle market, founder-owned businesses through technology enablement and strategic acquisitions. As Bertram has incrementally invested in larger companies, we recognized the opportunity to re-engage our value creation investment strategy with lower middle market businesses, leveraging our in-house IT services group, Bertram Labs, and our established deal origination network. Bertram wanted to ensure we continued to have a vehicle to partner with smaller founder-owned businesses within business services, consumer and industrial sectors," said Jeff Drazan, Founder and Managing Partner. "We plan to leverage the success of our tenured investment team and our 18-year track record to partner with exciting lower middle market companies through both control and non-control investments."
Ignite I made its first investment in Ridgeline Roofing & Restoration, a provider of residential re-roofing and restoration services across the Southeastern U.S. with operations in Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Mississippi and Florida in January 2024. Bertram made its second Ignite I fund investment in MSE Supplies, a Tucson, AZ-based supplier of advanced materials, laboratory equipment, lab supplies, and analytical services for both research and production environments in August 2024.
Ignite I commitments came from a well-respected and diverse group of new and existing global limited partners, including pension funds, foundations, endowments, fund of funds and family offices. Bertram's senior professionals also made sizable capital commitments to Ignite I in support of the firm's expanded strategy, as with prior funds.
"We appreciate the support and confidence of our new and existing investors, and we are thrilled to expand our investment capabilities," said Tom Beerle, Partner and investment lead for Ignite I.
Since its founding in 2006, Bertram has been responsible for managing over $4.0 billion of total capital commitments across six funds and has invested in over 150 platform and add-on acquisitions across business services, consumer, and industrial sectors.
Bertram is appreciative of Kirkland and Ellis for their long-time partnership with Bertram as fund formation counsel.
About Bertram Capital
Bertram Capital is a private equity firm targeting investments in lower middle market companies. Since its inception in 2006, the firm has raised over $4.0B of capital commitments. In addition to supplying strategic growth capital, Bertram Capital seeks to leverage proprietary processes and services, Bertram High-5sm and Bertram Labs, to empower its portfolio companies to unlock their full business potential. The Bertram High-5sm is an operationally-focused value creation strategy, which includes management augmentation, operational initiative implementation, complementary business acquisition, sales and marketing improvements, and leveraging technology and IP. The cornerstone of this strategy is Bertram Labs, its in-house technology team, which aims to drive growth and value through digital marketing, e-commerce, big data and analytics, application development, and internal and external platform optimization.
Bertram Capital V focuses on control investments in business services, consumer and industrial sectors with north of $7.5M of EBITDA.
Bertram Ignite I focuses on control and non-control investments in business services, consumer and industrial sectors with a minimum of $3M of EBITDA.
Visit www.bcap.com for more information.
Contacts:
David Hellier
Partner
[email protected]
SOURCE Bertram Capital
Share this article