YFM Equity Partners supports an investment into EIKON

Funds advised and managed by YFM Equity Partners (“YFM”), the specialist private equity fund manager have backed an investment into Eikon Group Limited, a cutting edge, end-to-end, digital post-production services for the motion picture and broadcast industry.

YFM’s investment comes from its two advised VCTs, British Smaller Companies VCT plc and British Smaller Companies VCT2 plc alongside the YFM Equity Partners 2015 Co-Investment LP.

EIKON Group Ltd was founded in 2014 by Peter Wright (CEO), Richard Fish (Commercial Director), Rick Corne (Innovations Director), Jon Gardner (Operations Director) and Russell Wetherell (Creative Director).

EIKON Group have cutting edge technology facilities in Soho, London and Burbank, Los Angeles, offering digital mastering and localisation to the film, broadcast and online media industry. Clients include Paramount Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Warner Bros, Universal Pictures, CBS and Netflix.

Now in their fifth year, EIKON have doubled revenues year on year and have grown from a staff of 6 to 100. Having recently finalised a lease on a new 20,000 square foot building in Los Angeles, growth is expected to continue at the same rate as the company develop current core business revenues and extend service offerings within the entertainment industry.

EIKON have developed world leading systems and workflows across multiple entertainment service lines in the entertainment industry. They oversee the mastering and localisation of major studios worldwide feature film releases to cinema, trailer campaigns and original content releases in other media for worldwide audiences.

EIKON CMS is a campaign management system to manage, localise, distribute and debut feature film trailers and marketing material for feature film marketing campaigns cross cinema, online and broadcast platforms. CMS allows for the worldwide debut of marketing content across all worldwide territories simultaneously on the world clock across platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and other platforms.

EIKON META system manages and facilitates the translation and subtitle delivery of feature film and episodic content in order to provide localised content around the world. It has added functionality of viewing and approval mechanisms for localised graphics and censor edits in order to expedite the entire release of any given content simultaneously.

Recent EIKON work includes the worldwide localisation and mastering for titles “Peter Rabbit”, “Greatest Showman”, “Shape of Water”, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”, “A Quiet Place”, ‘Red Sparrow”.

YFM’s funds will be used to support the expansion into the US where a new state of the art studio will be built in Burbank, Los Angeles as well as continued investment in the development of technology to enhance the service delivery to customers.

Colin Granger led the investment for YFM and will join the Board at completion.

Colin Granger, Partner at YFM, commented:

“We are delighted to be working with Eikon and the management team to support the future expansion into the US and the continued investment in underlying software development. Management have done a fantastic job in growing the business to where it is today and we look forward to supporting them in the next chapter of growth.

Market drivers in the technology enabled media sector continue to be exceptionally strong with increasing levels of content being produced and content producers targeting more global audiences, two trends which we believe Eikon will benefit significantly from.”

Peter Wright, Co-Founder and CEO of Eikon, added:

“We are very excited about the future and growing the business alongside YFM. Their history of helping businesses grow to the next level attracted us to them as well as their straightforward approach.”

YFM’s legal advice was provided by Simon Jones of Osborne Clarke, Commercial Due Diligence by Geoff Rampton of RPL and Financial Due Diligence by Rebecca Guerin and Maya Panova of RSM.

Dane Phillips (NOR Capital) and Andy Coghlan and Daniel Jonas (both WK Corporate Finance) acted as financial advisers to Eikon with support from Robert Taylor at 360 Law Services. AIB (John Tobin and Matthew Jennings) provided the senior debt on the transaction.