Akoya Capital

The Akoya model: High-touch throughout the process

Process is one of Akoya's key drivers in creating value for our management partners. Significant factors in the success of Akoya's management partners are the discipline and rigor we apply to the development and validation of the investment thesis; the research and analysis dedicated to the successful identification, valuation and acquisition of a platform company; human capital assessment expertise; and the merger and acquisition experience behind the initiation and completion of the financial structuring, negotiations and closing of the transaction. (Additional information.)

We work as a hands-on partner in the entire concept development and acquisition process, straight through closing. We start by delivering a unique project plan to ensure we execute a management partner's objectives in a timely and comprehensive manner.

We also believe our management partners are best served with a productive, interactive model. We speak and/or meet with our management partners a minimum of weekly, and — as the process progresses — daily as appropriate.

A summary workplan for a typical project would include the following:

Defining the investment thesis and acquisition plan

• Akoya's strategy development capability is instrumental in assisting management partners by helping to articulate and validate a thesis for creating significant value.
• We conduct a series of meetings to explore and define the investment premise, market opportunity, and criteria for the ideal acquisition targets/platform companies.

Validating the investment thesis through fact-based research

• We pressure-test the thesis with the management partner, using fact-based market and competitive data supplemented by strategic insight, and we create the economic and financial models to support the management partner's strategy, linking it to ensure exceptional returns.

Proactively identifying acquisition targets to execute the strategy

• Akoya's market research team develops a comprehensive list of potential acquisition targets and prioritizes them, based on defined criteria established with the management partner.
• Through fact-based analysis, we pre-screen the pool of targets in conjunction with the management partner, often culling the list from several hundred companies down to several dozen that meet the characteristics of the ideal platform.

Developing a strategy to create value

• Our operating expertise gives us the ability to work with our CEOs to assess operating conditions quickly and thoroughly and provide strategic and tactical action steps for the thesis and company pro formas.
• Akoya develops a three-year operating pro forma focusing on the specific steps to be taken to create accretive value.

Developing detailed financial models

• Working with management, we create comprehensive models that include analyses of historic results restated for non-recurring or discretionary items, an optimized opening capital structure, and detailed operating pro formas.

Negotiating the transaction

• Akoya plays an integral role in every phase of the negotiations — we negotiate the letter of intent, using maximum flexibility and creativity to forge an agreement between the parties.
• Rather than focus on extracting every ounce of value from a negotiation and potentially creating a contentious environment, Akoya’s style is to look for win-win solutions in which all parties can achieve their desired outcomes: employees, customers, operating partners, shareholders.

Financing the transaction

• Akoya structures every transaction with the long-term success of the company in mind.
• Our primary goal is to build a capital structure that will support growth and weather the challenges of the company.
• Akoya — along with its principals — invests its own capital in every transaction.
• We are not reliant on a single funding source and are not tied to any one set of investment criteria. Akoya is in a position to evaluate each opportunity on its own merits.
• Our investment partners are highly successful professionals within private equity firms, hedge funds and family offices, as well as high-net-worth individuals who understand the power of the CEO-based vision.

Along with the discipline, detail and rigor of our approach to the transaction process, Akoya possesses additional transaction-enhancing assets:

Senior Advisory Council

Our core team's expertise is further enhanced by a Senior Advisory Council — a network of leading executives who lend their experience, insight and connections to Akoya-backed management teams as formal and informal advisors and co-investors.

With these trusted, meaningful relationships, Akoya Capital differentiates itself from private equity through the span of hands-on support we provide a management partner, the investment thesis, the target company, and the new business entity.

An Akoya Capital Senior Advisory Council member has a vested interest in the success of an Akoya-sponsored investment opportunity and provides real impact with an inexhaustible level of passion and commitment to building meaningful enterprise value. Contributions take the form of generous professional stewardship working with Akoya Capital management partners and co-investors to realize their vision. The Senior Advisory Council invests in each transaction as well.

Our Senior Advisory Council members bring relevant domain expertise and thought leadership to the process and often continue to expand their value as members of post-acquisition boards or as strategic advisors throughout the due diligence process.

Akoya Capital-Carlyle Group association

Akoya provides additional assistance to our management partners in our association with Carlyle Group, a boutique retained executive search and assessment firm whose hallmark is long-term client relationships based on delivering high-quality results. Established in 1982 and headquartered in Chicago, the firm has a remarkable history of helping to build and grow hundreds of innovative organizations ranging from start-ups to multinationals. The Akoya-Carlyle association is a key resource for Akoya as we assist our management partners in developing their own teams.

Executives' potential for value creation

Akoya Capital's unequaled value proposition in executing successful transactions is speed and probability. Given our experience and history, we are able to unite proven leadership with the right strategy, company, operating plan and capital for a managed high probability of success for our management partners and co-investors.

Akoya Capital possesses world-class acquisition capabilities alongside seasoned human capital expertise. Akoya's core team leverages career-long operating and merger and acquisition experience throughout each transaction. Collectively, the team brings deep functional expertise in strategy consulting, market research and executive level assessment — resulting in a penetrating understanding of middle-market companies' key success factors.

Akoya uses parameters representing our own best practices, coupled with the work of leading industrial and clinical psychologists, to identify and assess executives' potential to lead investor-backed initiatives. Co-investors value the rigor that goes into our assessment process and subscribe to our core belief in leadership as the heart of value creation.

Akoya Capital, LLC
625 North Michigan Avenue
Suite 2100
Chicago, Illinois 60611
312.604.3940