Brightwood Capital Advisors Anchors Senior Secured Term Loan to Finance Acquisition of Longtime Portfolio Company ECP-PF Holdings Group
Posted: November 1, 2021 in Chains
Planet Fitness
NEW YORK, N.Y. – Brightwood Capital Advisors, a leading private credit firm focused on providing capital to growing North American middle-market businesses, announced that it supported the sale of portfolio company ECP-PF Holdings Group, one of the nation’s largest Planet Fitness franchisees, to TowerBrook Capital Partners, an international investment management firm.
ECP-PF has been a portfolio company of Brightwood since 2012 and has executed several transactions to support the company’s growth from a founder-owned, 15-location startup to a 108-location leader in the fitness franchisee sector serving approximately 600,000 members in the United States and Canada.
“This transaction represents the realization of our mission at Brightwood to partner with both sponsored and non-sponsored businesses to help them grow,” said Kunal Shah, Managing Director at Brightwood. “We are enthusiastic about continuing the partnership alongside TowerBrook.”
“Brightwood has been an essential partner for us at every stage of our growth, and as we weathered the pandemic’s impact on the fitness industry,” said Omar Simmons, Founder and Former Executive Chairman of ECP-PF. “We’re thrilled to continue working with the Brightwood team as we look to expand and capitalize on the fitness industry’s rebound.”
Brightwood acted as sole lead arranger for the transaction and will be administrative agent on the term loan facilities.
“Extending our partnership with ECP-PF and TowerBrook to a small group of trusted co-investors is definitionally a win-win for all involved,” said Sachin Goel, Managing Director and Brightwood’s Head of Capital Markets. “We’re excited to have assembled this syndicate to further accelerate ECP-PF’s growth.”
