LGT Capital Partners invests in H&MV Engineering

LGT Capital Partners led a minority investment in H&MV Engineering on 9 September 2024, with funds managed by Hamilton Lane co-investing through its impact platform. The transaction combined the purchase of shares from Exponent and management shareholders with a subscription for new shares, and valued the company at an enterprise value of €500M–1.5bn, an EV/EBITDA multiple of 15x–25x on expected EBITDA of €25–50M. Exponent retained control. H&MV designs, builds, commissions and maintains the high-voltage infrastructure through which electricity reaches a site: substations, switchgear and the connections to the transmission network. Its customers are data centre operators, renewable energy developers and utilities, served from Ireland and the United Kingdom across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. It generated revenue of €450–900M and expected growth of around 50% that year, with an order book above one billion euros and a weighted pipeline exceeding 1.7 billion. The work sits on the critical path of every project it serves. A data centre cannot open, nor a wind farm export, until the grid connection is energised, and the number of contractors qualified to work on high-voltage systems is limited by certification and by the scarcity of engineers trained to that level. Demand follows three forces at once: the power requirements of data centres, the connection of renewable generation, and the reinforcement of networks for electrified heating and transport. Rothschild & Co acted as sole equity and debt financial adviser to H&MV, with Macfarlanes and A&L Goodbody as legal counsel and LEK and KPMG on due diligence, while Goodwin advised LGT Capital Partners.

In the past, H&MV Engineering was acquired by Exponent Private Equity in 2022 as part of its expansion strategy.