It’s been a busy year for Align Capital Partners. The private equity firm, which has offices in Dallas and Cleveland, announced today the closing of its 14th overall investment of 2020 with Excergy. It was the company’s fifth add-on for its utility market intelligence platform, E Source, which was acquired in June 2019. 

The P.E. firm earlier this year acquired QuadROI, UtiliWorks Consulting, Trove Predictive Data Science, and StrategyWise.  The companies will be merged under the E Source umbrella over the course of the next few months. With the latest deal comes new service offerings such as predictive data science and smart technology consulting for E Source, Align Capital Partners told Dallas Innovates in an email.

Excergy, which partners with water, electric, and gas utilities and municipalities, offers “smart water” solutions for advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), among other consulting and technology implementations.

The financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. 

The Excergy acquisition is Align Capital Partner’s 32rd overall investment since its founding in 2016, a number that includes both platform and add-on investments, according to the firm. Align currently has 12 platform investments.

The acquisitions are part of E Source’s efforts to lead the industry in tactical solutions to help customers the challenges that utilities face in a “rapidly evolving market,” according to a news release.

The private equity firm, which manages some $775 million in committed capital, has two funds: Align Capital Partners Fund I and Align Capital Partners Fund II, which closed earlier this year, the company said in an email to Dallas Innovates.

The P.E. firm has a focus on the technology, business services, specialty manufacturing/distribution, and healthcare sectors, and it makes control investments in lower-middle market and differentiated companies to accelerate their growth.

In August of this year, the P.E. firm also acquired Richardson-based Electronic Transaction Consultants, a toll tech leader that processes billions of transactions each year, plans to extend into markets where mobility-as-a-service and intelligent transportation systems merge.

Of the new deal, the P.E. firm’s Managing Partner and Co-Founder Rob Langley said 2020 has been a transformative year for E Source. The “acquisitions enhance E Source’s value proposition and strategically complement one another by giving E Source customers the competitive advantage and intelligence they need to succeed,” he said.

Excergy’s CEO Jim Ketchledge said E Source is a great partner for Excergy. Both companies believe in the “transformative power of utility technology,” Ketchledge said in the news release.

“Together we can help bring utilities and cities to the 21st century by better leveraging technology to capture, synthesize, and use data to make optimized decisions, conserve resources, and best serve their customers,” he added.

E Source recently formed a Technology Planning and Implementation Consulting Division, which will be joined by Excergy according to its CEO, Wayne Greenberg in the news release.

“The company’s team of industry veterans have been offering energy and water solutions for over 20 years,” he said. “Excergy’s experience in AMI implementation makes for a perfect fit to the UtiliWorks acquisition we completed in February of this year.”

E Source has tackled a multitude of technological challenges over three decades in the U.S. and Canada, according to the news release. More than “two-thirds of the electric and gas utilities in the U.S. and Canada have trusted E Source to help solve their most complex challenges using data and consumer insights,” the company said in the release.

Align Capital Partners’ Dave Perotti, operating partner; Matt Iodice, vice president; and Corey Roe, senior associate; worked with. Langley on the transaction, the P.E. firm said.

Sophia Gonzalez contributed to this report. The story was updated on Sept. 24, 2020, at 6:48 p.m. to clarify the closing of Align Capital Partners’ latest acquisition, Excergy, and the add-on investments for its utility market intelligence platform, E Source. Additional details about the deal were added from an email to Dallas Innovates. Excergy is Align’s 32nd investment since the P.E. firm’s founding.

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