Sydney 15 September 2022: The Australian Investment Council has awarded Pacific Equity Partners (PEP) its Large Cap Investment Award for its 2018 investment in Intellihub, Australasia’s leading smart metering business, and the subsequent sale in April 2022 of a 50% interest to the Brookfield infrastructure Fund 4 (Brookfield).
Accepting the Award, Cameron Blanks, Managing Director for PEP said: “We are very honoured to be able to accept this Award which recognises what Private Equity can do when your mission is to build businesses and back vision.” “The success we have had building Intellihub into Australasia’s leading smart metering business began with the foresight of Adrian Clark – former CEO of Intellihub who is now CEO of Intellihub’s technology offshoot CrescoNet – and the belief in smart metering technology and the role it could play in Australia’s changing energy landscape.
“The ongoing success is a great testament to the skill, dedication, hard work of the team at Intellihub led by Wes Ballantine and supported by PEP and Brookfield. “Intellihub is Australasia’s leading smart metering and digital energy management business. The business has achieved an enormous amount – but we all most certainly believe the best is yet to come,” Mr Blanks said. PEP first invested in Intellihub through the Secure Assets Fund I in 2018. PEP built the business through three separate carve outs: Acumen from Origin, Mercury from Metrix, and Intellihub from Landis+Gyr. Over the following years, Intellihub grew significantly and became the outright market leader in the smart metering industry in Australasia.
PEP made the decision to sell down 50% of its investment in Intellihub to a strategic partner in 2021, and following an extensive, global search, Brookfield was selected in 2022 based on the strength of its ability to help drive the next leg of Intellihub’s growth journey. The remaining 50% of PEP’s investment was rolled into a A$1.5B single asset continuation fund called the Smart Metering Fund, which is a market first innovation in the Australasian private equity market.
About Pacific Equity Partners
Pacific Equity Partners (PEP) is an Australia-based Private Markets Fund Manager. Founded in 1998, PEP is a leader in Australian and New Zealand markets. PEP works in partnership with management teams to drive business success through transformational profit improvement and have built a reputation for delivering worldclass returns. Information on PEP and its investee companies can be found at www.pep.com.au
About Intellihub Group
In mid 2018, Pacific Equity Partners (PEP) and Switzerland-headquartered global Landis+Gyr, a leading provider of energy management solutions, bought Origin Energy’s smart meters, Acumen. It was the maiden investment in PEP’s Secure Assets Fund (SAF). Subsequently, PEP acquired Metrix from Mercury NZ Ltd in early 2019 and merged the businesses to create the Intellihub Group.
Intellihub Group is the only independent, dedicated multi-utility metering platform in Australia and New Zealand and is the provider of choice for more than 30 leading utility retailers like, Origin Energy, Aurora Energy, ActewAGL, Mercury Energy and Simply Energy. The group has more than 1.5 million meters and a rapidly growing pipeline of committed deployments.
Intellihub Group has received a world first Electrical Grids and Storage Certification under the Climate Bonds Standard (CBS) for its Green Loan. The A$1.45 billion fiveyear facility will fund the rapid rollout of smart meters to homes across Australia and New Zealand.
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