New Delhi, Aug. 13 -- Singapore-headquartered and India-focused private equity firm Everstone Capital, which has clocked partial or full exits from a number of companies over the past year and a half, is now signing off from a legacy bet from its maiden fund, it is learnt.
The PE firm - having fully/partially exited companies like Servion Global, Everise, Burger King franchisee Restaurant Brands Asia, SJS Enterprises, Indostar, VLCC and Sahyadri Hospital, is now selling its remaining 12.47% stake in Interarch Building Products Ltd, encashing up to Rs 162 crore or a shade under $20 million.
This comes a year after it made a partial exit via a buyback. It pocketed Rs 13.5 crore in that tranche.
Everstone had invested in Interarch in December 2007 from its first fund. It put in Rs 100 crore, or about $25 million at the prevailing exchange rates. Dhanpal Jhaveri, vice chairman at Everstone Group, has been representing the PE firm on the board of the company.
In rupee terms, it would generate annualized returns of under 4% while the PE firm would be taking a haircut in dollar terms, as per VCCircle estimates.
For perspective, PE firms typically chase an IRR of 20-30% in rupee terms.
Interarch provides design, engineering, manufacturing and project management services for the installation of pre-engineered steel buildings.
The four-decade-old company clocked net sales of Rs 1,293 crore with net profit of Rs 86.2 crore for FY24. For FY23, it recorded a revenue of Rs 1,124 crore up from Rs 835 crore the year before. Profit after tax for the period rose to Rs 81.5 crore from Rs 17.1 crore the year before.
Interarch had filed its documents with the Securities and Exchange Board of India in March. The IPO comprises a fresh issue of shares by the company to raise Rs 200 crore and an offer for sale of up to 4.45 million shares by its promoters and Everstone.
Everstone's first fund, Indivision India Partners, is a 2006 vintage vehicle and raised $425 million. Its second fund, of 2010 vintage, secured $580 million in capital commitments while the third fund, of 2016 vintage, garnered $731 million.
Everstone, co-led by Sameer Sain and Atul Kapur, launched its fourth fund in 2021. It aimed to raise as much as $950 million and even marked the first close at $500 million. However, Bloomberg reported late last year that the PE firm raised $300 million for an interim vehicle amid a challenging fundraising environment and that it was instead raising a new fund with a target of $1 billion.
IndoSpace, which is backed by Everstone and US-based industrial real estate firm Realterm, also cut short its fund size after it managed to raise about two-thirds of its $600-million target corpus. This was primarily because of weakness in the fundraising environment globally, geopolitical tensions and a higher interest rate regime.
The firm floated the fund and made its first close in January last year. The fund, IndoSpace Logistics Parks IV, marked another interim close in September last year at $393 million. At this level, the new fund is also smaller than its predecessor, which garnered about $580 million.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from VC Circle.