Boston, Georgia, USA & London, UK, June 4, 2014 (Business Wire) – Growth equity investor Summit Partners have announced a joint venture with FleetCor Technologies, Inc. to acquire Masternaut Group Holdings Limited, Europe’s largest provider of telematics solutions to commercial fleets, from Francisco Partners. Masternaut’s management team, led by its experienced CEO Martin Hiscox, will continue to operate the business and remain shareholders in the company.
Founded in 1996 and with headquarters in the U.K., Masternaut provides a SaaS-based Mobile Resource Management (MRM) application suite for businesses of all sizes to help them achieve greater operational efficiencies through a lowering of vehicle fuel consumption, effective tracking of assets, productivity increases in workforce, reduced vehicle wear and tear, improved management of driver behaviour, and a reduction in CO2 emissions.
The company has over 300,000 assets, vehicles and people connected to its SaaS solutions. More than 15,000 users interact every hour with the systems, and over 50 million data transactions are processed and configured into 20,000 reports daily. With customers in 32 countries, Masternaut has multiple offices and partners throughout Europe, North America, South America and Asia.
“We are excited to partner with both Summit Partners and FleetCor,” said Martin Hiscox, CEO of Masternaut. “Summit Partners brings a wealth of experience in helping fast growing companies reach their goals. FleetCor is a leading global provider of fuel cards and workforce payments products to the same commercial fleet customers that Masternaut serves. We look forward to exploring significant cross marketing opportunities that exist between our companies to accelerate the growth of Masternaut. We also would like to thank Francisco Partners for their tremendous support of our company over the last four years.”
“We are very pleased to complete the acquisition of Masternaut,” said Han Sikkens, a Managing Director with Summit Partners. “The company is the pan-European market leader in telematics-based solutions led by a very strong and experienced management team. With the largest R&D team in Europe, Masternaut continuously innovates to deliver the most reliable and scalable platform available on the market today.”
John Carroll, a Managing Director with Summit, added: “We are also excited to partner with FleetCor, a company we originally backed in 2002 that has become an undisputed global leader in its industry and that can bring a lot of valuable assets and know-how to support the continued growth of Masternaut.”
Ron Clarke, Chairman and CEO of FleetCor, said: “We are delighted to team up with Summit Partners in acquiring Masternaut. In a short period of time, Masternaut has developed the best-in-class telematics product and a pan-European footprint. We at FleetCor have valuable fleet customer and partner relationships in Europe. Combination of the two would allow us to deliver more value to our clients, differentiate our product offerings, and ultimately grow our businesses.”
