Navigation Capital Partners, an Atlanta-based middle market private equity firm, has acquired Specialized Technical Services, a provider of smart grid infrastructure upgrades and meter-related services to municipal, co-operative and investor-owned utilities.
STS is the first in a series of acquisitions planned by NCP in support of its initiative to build a provider of value-added field and data management services to electric, water and gas utilities.
STS, based in Richmond, Kentucky, provides a wide range of solutions designed to enhance a utility’s ability to monitor and manage its assets.
NCP has appointed Robert E. Shively, a member of its executive-in-residence programme, as chief executive officer of STS. Shively formerly served as the president of SM&P Utility Resources, one of the largest providers of underground locating services to utilities nationwide.
NCP’s executive-in-residence programme is the firm’s approach of identifying experienced leadership within an industry attractive for investment, and then searching as a team for the right companies to acquire.
NCP plans to help STS expand into a one-stop shop of high value field and data management solutions designed to enhance a utility’s ability to manage its assets, like the electric grid.
Additional acquisitions are expected to complement STS’s core capabilities, expand the breadth of its service offerings and broaden its geographic reach.
“We are excited about combining Rob’s background of selling to utilities and managing a large, distributed, field services workforce, with STS, which has established itself within the meter-services niche,” says Larry Mock, managing partner of NCP. “We believe that the strength of the platform will enable us to quickly broaden the scope of services that we can offer to utilities. And with the added breadth of several additional target acquisitions, we can offer utilities and meter manufacturers the opportunity to partner with a solutions provider with substantially greater scale and capabilities than many of its competitors.”
Mock and Shively will join the STS board of directors along with NCP partner Eerik Giles and NCP operating partner Craig Kirsch.
