Silver Lake has officially unveiled its fifth flagship buyout fund in an SEC filing. And while the document didn’t specify a fundraising target, it could be massive: an earlier Bloomberg report indicated the tech-focused firm is seeking to raise as much as $12.5 billion.
The filing is part of a busy few days for Silver Lake—really, a busy past year. Reports broke late last week that the firm had partnered with Broadcom to offer nearly $18 billion for the Toshiba memory chip business, just days after Silver Lake completed the sale of Vantage Data Centers, potentially for more than $1 billion. The California-based firm’s other major recent transactions include leading a $1.1 billion investment in Alibaba affiliate Koubei, participation in a $4 billion deal to buy UFC and, of course, backing Dell’s $67 billion acquisition of EMC in the largest tech merger ever.
Headline-grabbing deals like that are where Silver Lake’s new pool of capital will be going. Where will all that cash come from? Investors impressed by the performance of the firm’s previous buyout vehicle.
That would be Silver Lake Partners IV, a $10.3 billion fund that closed in 2013 and which boasts a 30.9% IRR as of the end of 4Q 2016, according to the PitchBook Platform. That figure ranks tops in its peer benchmark by a wide margin—no other fund in the group currently tops 20%—besting vehicles raised by massive firms such as KKR, Advent International and Warburg Pincus.
Here’s a look at the top five funds in that PitchBook benchmark of 2012 vintage buyout funds exceeding $5 billion in size, with all returns data current as of 4Q 2016:
Silver Lake
Silver Lake has deployed just about 60% of that $10.3 billion in capital, per PitchBook data, investing in companies such as the aforementioned Koubei, an ecommerce provider; Cast & Crew Entertainment Services, a provider of financial services for the entertainment industry; and Fanatics, an online retailer of sports merchandise. The fund has been put to use in both platform investments and add-ons, backing primarily American companies but also dipping into the British and Australian markets.
Interested in more info on Silver Lake’s past funds, recent investments, management team and more? PitchBook subscribers can check it all out right here.
Article by Kevin Dowd, PitchBook
