Boston, MA -- November 1, 2010 -- Great Hill Partners (“Great Hill” or “GHP”) today announced the sale of Central Security Group, Inc. (“Central Security”), a leading provider of residential and commercial alarm monitoring services, to an affiliate of Summit Partners.
Headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and founded in 1999 by industry veterans, Mark Wilson and Harry Schenk, Central Security provides alarm monitoring services to residential customers across 12 Southern and South Central states. In December 2005, GHP acquired a majority stake in Central Security and arranged a comprehensive financing package to support the company’s expansion.
Since GHP’s investment, the company has built a network of authorized security alarm system dealers and utilized internal sales efforts to become one of the largest providers of alarm monitoring services nationwide, increasing total subscribers and recurring monthly revenue at compound annual growth rates of 15% and 16%, respectively.
GHP Managing Partner Chris Gaffney commented, “During the course of our investment, Central Security delivered significant and consistent growth and tremendous value creation despite a challenging economic environment. On behalf of Great Hill, I want to thank Mark Wilson and Harry Schenk for their dedication and hard work in expanding Central’s footprint and building such a great company for its customers, employees and shareholders. I am confident that they will continue to extend their market leadership in the future.”
Central Security CEO Mark Wilson commented, “We are grateful for Great Hill’s support over the past four-plus years as we leveraged our unique operating model to expand into new markets. Great Hill’s experience in the security alarm sector and corporate finance expertise helped us to obtain the optimal capital structure to support our substantial growth through the recent recession.”
Central Security Group was advised by Jefferies & Company and Barnes Associates on the transaction.
About Great Hill Partners
Great Hill Partners is an investment firm that manages over $2.7 billion in capital and focuses on investing in growth companies operating in the business and consumer services, media, transaction processing and software industries. Great Hill Equity Partners IV, L.P. and its affiliates target equity investments of $30 million to $150 million. For more information, please visit the Great Hill Partners web site at www.greathillpartners.com.
