Mercury Capital Fund 3 announced the 100% sale of MessageMedia for AUD$1.7 billion to Sinch, a leading global cloud communications business listed on the Nasdaq Sweden
During June 2021, VPEG3 investee Mercury Capital Fund 3 announced the 100% sale of MessageMedia for AUD$1.7 billion to Sinch, a leading global cloud communications business listed on the Nasdaq Sweden.
MessageMedia was founded in 2000 Grant Rule, and was originally known as Message4U, before rebranding in 2004.
Following Mercury Capital’s initial investment into MessageMedia via Mercury Capital Fund 2 in August 2018, the business transformed from a primarily Australian and New Zealand SMS provider to the leading global Server Message Block (SMB) Customer Engagement platform.
Mercury Capital Fund 3 subsequently invested in MessageMedia across two tranches (November 2019 and January 2020), along with an additional follow-on investment by Mercury Fund 2. These investments further supported the business’s transformation in rebuilding the management team, consolidating the platform and the successful add-on investment of US-based messaging platform SimpleTexting.
MessageMedia is the largest provider of SMS-based marketing and communications in Australia and New Zealand, employing more than 350 people and is estimated to send 420 million messages a month across 200 plus countries on behalf of over 60,000 clients. This exit marked an excellent investment for Mercury Capital and at the time of announcement marked one of the largest ever deals for an Australian technology company. Once completed, the sale will deliver Mercury Capital Fund 3 investors, including VPEG3 with a strong return on investment across a 1.6 year investment period.
VPEG3’s share of the net sale proceeds of MessageMedia will be distributed to all VPEG3 investors once the sale is completed during the second half of 2021.
