News

Walnut Creek, CA, December 8, 2021 – Insignia Capital Group today announced the completion of an equity investment in New Engen, Inc. to accelerate the Seattle-based digital marketing agency’s next stage of growth and expand its service offerings. The partnership will accelerate New Engen’s impressive organic growth trajectory through strategic investments to enable the agency’s vision to become a global leader in accountable digital marketing services, while continuing to enhance its current, comprehensive service portfolio.

“We are extremely excited to partner with the New Engen team,” said Tony Broglio, Partner at Insignia Capital. “New Engen’s best-in-class talent has an outstanding track record of providing exceptional customer and employee satisfaction that drives accountable growth for their clients. New Engen’s ability to leverage and combine data with creative insights is unique and recognized by their diverse client roster of Fortune 500 companies and emerging digital brands. We look forward to supporting their continued growth and expansion of capabilities.”

“Insignia brings a wealth of industry expertise and experience scaling professional services companies,” said Justin Hayashi, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at New Engen, Inc. “In the coming months and years, we expect to partner with Insignia on acquisitions which will expand our capabilities and allow us to provide even greater value for our existing clients. Insignia also understands that New Engen is a product of the exceptional employees that work here and company culture that we have built. They fully support our mission to make New Engen a transformative and fulfilling experience for all employees.”

Insignia Capital will join the New Engen Board as part of the deal along with New Engen President Jon White. New Engen CEO Justin Hayashi and August Capital will also stay on as Board members. New Engen will continue to manage its day-to-day business independently and there are no plans to change staffing, organizational structure, or the agency’s brand.

Stephens Inc. served as exclusive financial advisor and Cooley LLP served as legal counsel to New Engen, Inc. Kirkland & Ellis LLP provided legal counsel to Insignia.

About New Engen
Born digital, people-powered, data-driven, and strategically creative, New Engen is a growth-obsessed integrated marketing agency with deep, industry-shaping expertise across media, creative, market research, and analytics. New Engen partners with the world’s most innovative brands to accelerate the execution of winning ideas in a rapidly shifting market to achieve breakthrough results. For more information, please visit www.newengen.com.

Walnut Creek, CA, November 18, 2021 – Insignia Capital Group portfolio company WillowTree, a market-leading digital product consultancy serving the world’s most admired brands, today announces its second acquisition of 2021 with its agreement to acquire Poatek, the leading privately-held Brazilian software engineering boutique. The acquisition further strengthens WillowTree’s best-in-class digital strategy, design, development, and growth practices by adding additional data science capabilities and expands its global footprint by adding offices in Porto Alegre, São Paulo, Lisbon and Miami.

“The pursuit of world class talent is our number one priority—and Poatek’s team is second to none,” said Tobias Dengel, CEO of WillowTree. “Their complementary culture and global engineering prowess make this the perfect match and expands the suite of premium services we can offer to our combined family of clients.”

“When we founded Poatek, our goal was to shine a global spotlight on the amazing software engineering talent native to Brazil,” said Cristiano Franco, CEO and Founder of Poatek. “Joining forces with WillowTree marks a major milestone on that journey, and creates opportunities for our team to help tackle the digital transformation challenges of the most recognizable brands in the world.”

WillowTree is ideally positioned to help large enterprises across the entire digital spectrum, from customer-facing experiences to ones within their own digital workplace. The company has deep industry-specific experience building customer and employee-facing mobile, web and other digital products for Fortune 500 clients spanning financial services, media, travel & hospitality, healthcare and more.

About WillowTree
WillowTree helps the world’s most admired brands on their path to digital leadership—from product to process. Founded in 2008 as a pioneering mobile app development company, WillowTree has grown into a full-service digital product consultancy, helping our clients anywhere humans and technology intersect. Our teams provide end-to-end, full-stack development, strategy, design, and growth marketing services. Select clients include Domino’s, HBO, FOX, National Geographic, Synchrony Financial, PepsiCo and ABInBev. To learn more, visit www.willowtreeapps.com

 About Poatek
Founded in Porto Alegre, Brazil in 2015, and with offices in São Paulo, Lisbon and Miami, Poatek is a software engineering boutique that hires high-skilled professionals to build software solutions for clients globally. Poatek focuses on full-stack software development, native-mobile, UX/UI, and data science/machine learning. Our clients include major corporations and mid-sized companies for which software is at the core of their business. To learn more, visit www.poatek.com

Walnut Creek, CA, October 28, 2021 – Insignia Capital Group portfolio company Netrush, a leading eCommerce accelerator partnering with premium brands providing teams, technology, strategy, and infrastructure to thrive on Amazon, has acquired Sellozo in a deal believed essential for supporting today’s digital-first brands. Sellozo is an AI-driven Amazon PPC software platform engineered to support, automate and optimize global growth, for sellers and vendors across the North American, European, and Asia-Pacific markets. Netrush will build on the current Sellozo success of innovating to maintain a best-in-class automated ad platform and create new value for existing partners, whilst generating benefits for Sellozo clients in supply chain, creative, data analytics, finance, brand protection and more.

Netrush CEO and Co-founder, Brian Gonsalves says, “The days of blind investment and paying a share of spend are over. With the acquisition of Sellzo alongside our current demand-side-platform advertising, creative and supply chain capabilities we have a truly integrated platform. Marketers can now use the Netrush platform for a full funnel view including brand building, new customer acquisition, repeat customer experience, in-market PPC efficiency, in-the-box experience and loyalty. It is a win-win for all involved.”

Sellozo CEO, Nic Delorme adds “Sellozo saw an opportunity in the market for greater effectiveness in advertising spend while increasing the transparency and accessibility for enterprise brands, as well as the growing number of successful seller entrepreneurs. Joining Netrush is a catalyst moment – combining our teams will spark a flurry of innovation and enhancements to both platforms, resulting in a comprehensive world class ecommerce growth platform.”

Gonsalves concludes “The ecosystem of ecommerce services is highly fragmented. A truly integrated advertising approach needs to work seamlessly with profitability, inventory availability, multi-channel data, and customer lifetime value data. The speed of decision making and the dollars required mean that advertising can no longer be managed off to the side. When advertising actions are continually assessed through transactions then advertising investments can be assessed alongside the many effective levers for growth. Brands need to know where to spend the next dollar of investment and verify the effectiveness of that investment.”

About Netrush
Netrush is an online retailer that partners with premium brands to provide the teams, technology, strategy, and infrastructure needed to thrive on Amazon and other e-commerce platforms. With headquarters in Vancouver, Washington, and processing facilities in Kentucky and Canada, Netrush provides a full suite of capabilities ranging from supply chain to creative services that make brands stand out across the shopping journey. To learn more, visit www.netrush.com

About Sellozo
Sellozo is a platform that enables Amazon sellers and agencies to automate and improve the profitability of Amazon product advertising. The platform includes a machine learning algorithm that determines and sets the optimal bid for every keyword and target every day based on a Target ACoS goal. Every day Sellozo executes over 500,000 bid updates on behalf of their customers and manages over $20M in ad spend every month.

Walnut Creek, CA, September 15, 2021 – Insignia Capital Group portfolio company WillowTree, a market-leading digital product consultancy serving the world’s most admired brands, announced the acquisition of Maark, a Boston Massachusetts-based end-to-end digital transformation agency specializing in Adobe Experience Cloud. The acquisition further strengthens WillowTree’s best-in-class digital strategy, design, development, and growth practices by adding specialized expertise across a suite of digital business products leveraged by more than two-thirds of the Fortune 500.

“Delivering industry-leading digital experiences is equal parts hiring the best talent and giving them the autonomy to practice their craft,” said Tobias Dengel, CEO of WillowTree. “Maark shares our passion for selecting the best talent and creating an unparalleled environment for them to grow. And their commitment to craft—specifically as it relates to the Adobe ecosystem—allows our clients to tap into a team of experts uniquely positioned to both accelerate existing product development and create the personalized digital experiences today’s customers demand.”

“Can you deliver world-class technology experiences? That’s the singular question today’s technology, product and marketing leaders are being judged on,” said Mike Colombo, CEO of Maark. “When they partner with WillowTree, the answer has always been a resounding ‘yes’. Pairing WillowTree’s deep bench of world-class strategy, design and engineering talent with Maark’s track record of developing award-winning digital experiences for marquee brands on the Adobe Experience Cloud, the value we can bring to our combined family of clients has never been greater.”
WillowTree is ideally positioned to help large enterprises across the entire digital spectrum, from customer-facing experiences to ones within their own digital workplace. The company has deep industry-specific experience building customer and employee-facing mobile, web and other digital products for Fortune 500 clients spanning financial services, media, travel & hospitality, healthcare and more.

About WillowTree
WillowTree helps the world’s most admired brands on their path to digital leadership—from product to process. Founded in 2008 as a pioneering mobile app development company, WillowTree has grown into a full-service digital product consultancy, helping our clients anywhere humans and technology intersect. Our teams provide end-to-end, full-stack development, strategy, design, and growth marketing services. Select clients include Domino’s, HBO, FOX, National Geographic, Synchrony Financial, PepsiCo and ABInBev. To learn more, visit www.willowtreeapps.com.

About Maark
Maark delivers end-to-end digital marketing services and cutting-edge product development in complex industries. Our expertise spans the planning and design of world-class user-experiences and the building and integration of the technologies that make those experiences possible. Clients include Manulife Financial Corporation, Forrester, Marriott, Verizon, Akamai, Dassault Systèmes, and iZotope.

Walnut Creek, CA, January 28, 2021 – Insignia Capital Group today announced an investment in Market Performance Group (MPG), a leading provider of sales strategy, account management, data and analytics, distribution/order to cash, and consulting services to health, personal care, food, and other CPG brands across brick and mortar and e-commerce retail channels, announced the completion of an equity investment from Insignia Capital Group. Insignia’s investment will allow MPG to accelerate its impressive organic and acquisition-based growth trajectory, while continuing to improve upon the comprehensive service offering it is able to provide to its clients. The entire leadership team from MPG will continue in their existing roles of running the company and will be assisted by the Insignia team in identifying and executing strategic partnerships and add-on acquisitions.  Founded in 2002, MPG is headquartered in Princeton Junction, NJ with six additional offices across the U.S.

“We are thrilled to partner with Insignia in this next phase of the Company’s growth,” said Marc Greenberger, Founder and Managing Partner at MPG.  “Insignia brings deep experience in both the consumer goods and business services sectors. We expect their strategic and operational expertise to be valuable as we continue to expand our capabilities and geographic presence to serve our growing portfolio of clients across all commerce channels.”

“MPG has a long track record of growth driven by outstanding customer and employee satisfaction. The team brings decades of industry experience, knowledge, and relationships to generate value for a diverse client roster including Fortune 500 companies and emerging brands,” said Tony Broglio, Partner at Insignia Capital Group. “We are very excited to support the future growth of the Company and its clients.”

Sawaya Partners served as exclusive financial advisor and Lowenstein Sandler served as legal counsel to MPG. Kirkland & Ellis LLP provided legal counsel to Insignia.

About Market Performance Group
Market Performance Group, LLC is a highly-regarded company, providing clients with a full spectrum of outsource services for the CPG Industry. They have a 15+ year track record of delivering value, growth, and innovative solutions to clients, with a focus on providing strategically advantaged consumer, category, and retailer insight-driven recommendations that can be successfully implemented in market. Services are offered through five verticals, including strategy & business consulting, managed sales services, business analytics & insights, distribution & order to cash services, and consumer marketing & retail merchandising. For more information, please visit www.marketperformancegroup.com

WALNUT CREEK, CA, December 14, 2020 – Insignia Capital Group today announced that it has completed the previously announced sale of Truco Enterprises (“Truco” or the “Company”) to Utz Brands (NYSE: UTZ) in a transaction valued at approximately $480 million in cash.

Truco is a leading maker of tortilla chips, salsa and queso sold under the On The Border® (“OTB”) brand.  Insignia Capital Group invested in Truco in 2014 to help the Company expand its distribution footprint and launch new product innovation.  Together, Insignia and Truco made significant investments in sales and R&D that tripled adjusted EBITDA over the past six years.  “It has been a true pleasure partnering with the Truco team to generate this exceptional outcome for all of the Company’s stakeholders,” said David Lowe, CEO of Insignia Capital Group.  “We believe Utz will be an exceptional steward of the brand as Truco executes on its next phase of growth.”

Insignia will continue to seek additional opportunities to partner with companies in the CPG food sector to leverage its expertise to help them accelerate growth.

Harris Williams & Co. acted as exclusive financial advisor and Kirkland & Ellis LLP acted as legal counsel to Truco Enterprises and Insignia Capital Group. Goldman Sachs acted as lead financial advisor to Utz Brands, Bank of America acted as financial advisor, and Cozen O’Connor served as legal counsel to Utz Brands, Inc.

About Truco Enterprises
Truco is a leading developer and marketer of tortilla chips, salsa, and queso under the On The Border® brand. The Company’s products are sold nationally through grocery retailers, club stores, and mass merchandisers. Truco Enterprises is the exclusive licensee of the On The Border® brand for food products sold through retail. For more information, please visit www.ontheborderchips.com. Truco Enterprises is a portfolio company of Insignia Capital Group.

WALNUT CREEK, CA, November 12, 2020 – Insignia Capital Group today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to sell Truco Enterprises (“Truco” or the “Company”), a leading maker of tortilla chips, salsa and queso sold under the On The Border® (“OTB”) brand, to Utz Brands (NYSE: UTZ) for a total purchase price of $480 million. The deal is expected to close in December 2020 and is subject to customary closing conditions including the receipt of regulatory approvals.

Insignia Capital Group invested in Truco in 2014 to help the Company expand its distribution footprint and launch new product innovation. Together, Insignia and Truco made significant investments in sales and R&D that tripled adjusted EBITDA over the past six years. “It has been a true pleasure partnering with the Truco team to generate this exceptional outcome for all of the Company’s stakeholders,” said David Lowe, CEO of Insignia Capital Group. “We believe Utz will be an exceptional steward of the brand as Truco executes on its next phase of growth.”

“The Truco team is thrilled to be joining the Utz family of brands, and we are thankful to our partners at Insignia Capital for all of their support”, said Truco CEO Shane Chambers. “On The Border is now one of the fastest growing Tortilla chip brands and the fastest growing dip brand in the category. Utz will be able to leverage its world class Direct Store Delivery network to help expand our brand into new markets. As a result, more consumers across the U.S will have access to our delicious, high quality tortilla chips and dips. I’m looking forward to working with Dylan and the rest of the Utz senior management team to continue our excellent growth trajectory.”

Harris Williams & Co. is acting as exclusive financial advisor and Kirkland & Ellis LLP is acting as legal counsel to Truco Enterprises and Insignia Capital Group. Goldman Sachs is acting as lead financial advisor to Utz Brands, Bank of America is acting as financial advisor, and Cozen O’Connor is serving as legal counsel to Utz Brands, Inc.

Please contact Sean Kelly at (925) 389-1761 with any questions regarding these transactions.

About Truco Enterprises
Truco is a leading developer and marketer of tortilla chips, salsa, and queso under the On The Border® brand. The Company’s products are sold nationally through grocery retailers, club stores, and mass merchandisers. Truco Enterprises is the exclusive licensee of the On The Border brand for food products sold through retail. For more information, please visit www.ontheborderchips.com. Truco Enterprises is a portfolio company of Insignia Capital Group.

MediaAlpha Prices Initial Public Offering LOS ANGELES, Calif – October 27, 2020  – MediaAlpha, Inc. (“MediaAlpha”) today announced the pricing of its initial public offering of 9,250,000 shares of its Class A common stock at a price of $19.00 per share. Of those shares, MediaAlpha is selling 6,258,502 shares and an affiliate of White Mountains (NYSE: WTM) is selling 2,991,498 shares as the selling stockholder. Insignia Capital Group is also selling a portion of its equity interests in the MediaAlpha business in connection with the transaction. The shares are expected to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange on October 28, 2020 under the symbol “MAX.” The offering is expected to close on October 30, 2020 subject to customary closing conditions. The underwriters have a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 1,387,500 shares of common stock at the initial public offering price, less underwriting discounts and commissions.

J.P. Morgan, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, and RBC Capital Markets are acting as joint bookrunners. Canaccord Genuity and William Blair are acting as bookrunners. MUFG is acting as a co-manager.

The offering is being made only by means of a prospectus. Copies of the final prospectus, when available, may be obtained from: J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, c/o Broadridge Financial Solutions, 1155 Long Island Avenue, Edgewood, NY 11717, by email at prospectus –  or by telephone at (866) 803-9204; or Citigroup Global Markets Inc., c/o Broadridge Financial Solutions, 1155 Long Island Avenue, Edgewood, NY 11717, by telephone at (800) 831-9146.

A registration statement on Form S-1 relating to these securities was declared effective by the Securities and Exchange Commission on October 27, 2020. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy these securities, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or jurisdiction.

Contacts

Investors
Denise Garcia
Hayflower Partners

Press
SHIFT

MediaAlpha Files Registration Statement for Initial Public Offering LOS ANGELES, Calif – October 5, 2020 – MediaAlpha, Inc. (“MediaAlpha”) today announced that it publicly filed a registration statement on Form S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) relating to a proposed initial public offering of its Class A common stock. MediaAlpha has applied to list its Class A common stock on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “MAX”.

A portion of the shares will be issued and sold by MediaAlpha and a portion will be sold by an affiliate of White Mountains (NYSE: WTM), as the selling stockholder. Insignia Capital Group will also be selling a portion of its equity interests in the MediaAlpha business in connection with the transactions. The number of shares to be offered and the price range for the proposed offering have not yet been determined. The offering is subject to market and other conditions, and there can be no assurance as to whether or when the offering may be completed, or as to the actual size or terms of the offering.

J.P. Morgan, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, and RBC Capital Markets are acting as joint bookrunners. Canaccord Genuity and William Blair are acting as bookrunners. MUFG is acting as a co-manager.

The proposed offering will be made only by means of a prospectus. Copies of the preliminary prospectus, when available, may be obtained from: J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, c/o Broadridge Financial Solutions, 1155 Long Island Avenue, Edgewood, NY 11717, by email at or by telephone at (866) 803-9204; or Citigroup Global Markets Inc., c/o Broadridge Financial Solutions, 1155 Long Island Avenue, Edgewood, NY 11717, by telephone at (800) 831-9146.

A registration statement on Form S-1 relating to the proposed sale of these securities has been filed with the SEC but has not yet become effective. These securities may not be sold nor may offers to buy be accepted prior to the time the registration statement becomes effective. Copies of the registration statement can be accessed through the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov.

This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy these securities, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or jurisdiction. Any offers, solicitations or offers to buy, or any sales of securities will be made in accordance with the registration requirements of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended.

Contacts

Investors
Denise Garcia
Hayflower Partners

Press
SHIFT