MONTREAL—Grass Valley has announced the successful completion of a $220 million strategic refinancing led by certain investment funds managed by Morgan Stanley Private Credit.
Grass Valley said that the strategic refinancing for the company, which is backed by the private equity firm Black Dragon Capital, will both strengthen the company’s balance sheet and refinance existing debt. It will also further position Grass Valley to "lead the reimagination of the future workflow for media through its Grass Valley Media Universe (GVMU) suite of solutions," the company said.
“The media industry is still in the early stages of defining the future of live production workflows and this investment further allows Grass Valley to accelerate our market leadership in support of this industry-wide transition,” said Grass Valley’s chairman and CEO, Louis Hernandez Jr. “With our surging performance from 2023, and now a stronger balance sheet, we intend to accelerate innovation across our entire portfolio, most notably in the AMPP ecosystem, as we begin to scale deployments across our global customer base.”
The refinancing builds on what the company is calling “an incredibly successful 2023, both operationally and financially, for Grass Valley. Operationally, the company completed its planned business transformation, having simplified the organizational structure, made key new appointments across the leadership team, optimized its global footprint, and focused the product portfolio to align with the changing media landscape. The business transformation allowed the company to further extend its significant investments in software and integrated hardware solutions as part of the most advanced cloud-native media platform in the industry. Through these investments customers are now realizing unmatched savings and workflow agility while producing the most watched content in the world.”
In announcing the deal, Grass Valley also reported that the business delivered strong results in 2023. This included growing revenue, with its strongest year since 2020 for live production and networking infrastructure hardware, and a significant increase in recurring revenue with AMPP revenues nearly doubling over last year. In addition, earnings increased over 100% while the company hired nearly 200 employees globally and saw its patent portfolio expand significantly due to its continued investments in innovation.
“We are excited to partner with Grass Valley and its management team on this transaction,” said Peter Ma, managing director, Morgan Stanley Private Credit. “The flexibility embedded within our senior debt investment along with the Company’s leading market position, comprehensive product portfolio and positive operating momentum position the business for significant future success.”
Morgan Stanley Private Credit’s investment in Grass Valley was led by managing director Peter Ma, executive director Griffin Coakley and vice president Chris Brown.
