Affirma’s bolt-on M&A strategy shines in S.Korea

Affirma Capital is a small player in South Korea’s private equity market, but its successful bolt-on strategy helps the mid-cap-focused investment firm expand its foothold in the domestic M&A sector.

The emerging market-targeted PE firm’s funding strategy also drew the attention of institutional investors. It has financed bolt-on acquisitions with profits of the companies it has invested and through acquisition financing, minimizing the use of its funds.   

Last year, the South Korean arm of Singapore-headquartered Affirma Capital raised a combined 630 billion won ($474 million) in three vehicles, data from the regulatory Financial Supervisory Service shows.

The fresh capital included 543.4 billion won ($410 million) in the fifth of its flagship Ascenta fund series from 14 limited partners. The fund size is double that of its predecessor fund.

Following the fundraising, Affirma Capital Korea’s has assets under management doubled to 1.2 trillion won as of end-2021, placing it as the 24th-largest PE firm in the country.

Affirma Capital was spun off from Standard Chartered Private Equity in 2019, following its senior executives’ $1 billion management buyout.

EXIT DEALS

In 2020, it pocketed a return of around 10 times its investment in EMC Co. It sold a 100% stake in the country's largest waste treatment firm to SK Engineering & Construction Co. for 1 trillion won.

After the PE firm bought a stake in a small-sized Korean sewage treatment company for 88.6 billion won in 2009, it increased its ownership to a majority stake in the company in 2016.

Its aggregate investment of 120 billion won in the Korean firm, renamed EMC, marked the first buyout deal by a financial investor in the sector.

Since then, Affirma has made follow-on acquisitions of six waste incineration and landfill companies in Korea for a combined 256 billion won and transformed EMC into a full-fledged waste management company.

EMC’ sales snowballed to 381 billion won in 2019 from 214 billion won in 2016. The company’s EBITDA soared eight-fold to 82 billion won during the period.

Affirma funded the string of acquisitions with EMC’s operating profits and acquisition financing, instead of tapping into its investment vehicle.

Samyang Package Corp., listed on the Korea Exchange, was another lucrative exit. Affirma bought out the packaging business carved out of Hyosung Corp., South Korea’s No. 1 PET bottle maker for 415 billion won in 2015 and injected another 116 billion won in a special purpose company established for the packaging business.

The following year, it merged the former package unit of Hyosung into its portfolio company Samyang Packaging, the No. 2 PET bottle supplier in Korea.

Affirma exited from Samyang through its IPO in 2017 and the remaining stake sale in 2021 with a return of 16%.

OTHER INVESTMENTS

Affirma has also built its reputation for pre-IPO deals. Its portfolio assets include T Map Mobility Co, SK Telecom Co.’s mobility spin-off; Metanet T Platform Co., a cloud computing startup; SeAH FS, an automotive steel tube supplier; SeAH ESAB Corp., a metal processing company; Hanmaeum Energy Co., an electric motor manufacturer; and Beam Mobility Korea Co., a Singapore-based electric scooter provider.

It also made bets on Sunwoo Fresh, an integrated meat processor and distributor and APR, an online-based commerce company.

In particular, its latest fund Ascenta V was mobilized to invest a combined $76.9 million in both SeAH FS and SeAH ESAB. The new vehicle focuses on South Korea, China, India and other Southeast countries, according to Affirma.

Affirma Capital’s Korean arm has invested a combined 231.6 billion won in 10 overseas companies since 2011. 

Write to Tae-Ho Lee at thlee@hankyung.com
Yeonhee Kim edited this article