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2022

First close of Innova Capital's seventh fund exceeds EUR 220 million

First close of Innova Capital's seventh fund exceeds EUR 220 million

Innova Capital, a leading Central European private equity firm, has announced that it has raised over EUR 220 million for the first close of its latest fund - Innova/7. Despite the rapidly changing economic landscape, Innova has reached over 60% of its final goal of EUR 350 million in just 10 months.

The vast majority of the capital was committed by existing investors (LPs) of prior funds. Commitments have been made by a global investor base, including commercial investors and international financial institutions.

Innova believes that technology and digitalization will underpin successful investment across the three sectors that Innova targets: Industrials, Business Services (including Financial Services), and Consumer & Lifestyle (including Healthcare). As in the past, Innova will focus on making control investments in companies with enterprise values of EUR 50–150 million, investing equity tickets of EUR 25–40 million. The Innova/7 strategy will be based on two key transaction types that have yielded considerable success in the past – Founder Succession and sector consolidation including Innova’s signature Platform+ strategy.

Innova has always maintained a strong focus on Environmental, Social and Governance standards (ESG), and has evolved from a primary emphasis on detection and mitigation of ESG-related risks towards proactively pursuing opportunities connected with responsible investing and sustainability. Innova is committed to be a pioneer in the field, and ESG will play an even more significant role in the Value Creation Process and strategy for Innova/7.

“Since our last fundraising, completed in 2018, Innova has relentlessly sought to exceed the expectations pledged to our investors. This has yielded some spectacular exits and a portfolio that is performing very robustly despite Covid and the war in Ukraine. We would like to thank the investors in Innova/7’s first close for their continued trust and commitment, which will allow us to take full advantage of a very exciting pipeline of new transactions,” says Krzysztof Kulig, Senior Partner, responsible for the fundraising.

Innova’s six investment funds since 1994 have totalled EUR 1.2 billion in assets and have fuelled the development of more than 60 companies across 10 countries in the region. The first four funds have been successfully divested and Innova/5 has only one remaining investment (Flokk, office furniture) having recently made impressive exits from Slovenia-based Trimo (construction cladding) yielding over 4.7x return and PeP (Polskie ePlatnosci, a leading payment processor), returning 5.2x. Innova/6 has completed nine investments and will deploy remaining funds to complete follow-on acquisitions across the portfolio.

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