JSI

Private Equity Manager (GP)

Case study

About the company

JSI is a consulting and broadband solutions provider to the telecommunications industry in the USA. The business offers a complete range of financial, engineering, regulatory, operational, and strategic services to telecommunications providers that are focused on rural communities.

Investment rationale

• JSI is a differentiated, mission-critical service provider with an experienced team and long-standing history of delivering a high-quality service to its customers.
• The private equity manager believes that the telecommunications industry is at an inflection point following the USA’s recently passed Infrastructure Bill, which allocated a significant budget to the deployment of fibre across the USA.
• The need to close the connectivity gap between rural and urban areas in the USA, brought to light by the COVID-19 crisis, provides an additional opportunity for market penetration and growth.
• The business has grown its revenues by c.10% per annum since 2019 and it has a diverse and sticky customer base of broadband providers across the USA.

Active management and value creation

• Stone-Goff Partners is a New York-based private equity investment firm that acquires and builds companies operating in the lower middle market. The JSI management team and Stone-Goff, which has been an investor in the company since 2018, believe that there are several growth initiatives that can be implemented by the company.
• Under Stone-Goff’s ownership, JSI has a recent track record of executing transformative M&A. The acquisitions of N-COM, an engineering firm specialising in communication systems; and Mid-State Consultants, a leading full-service engineering and outside plant firm, expanded the geographic reach of JSI and diversified the company’s product offering.
• JSI’s latest acquisition of Mitchell Engineering, a provider of engineering and design services to telecommunication clients in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Eastern Texas, continues this expansion.
• Stone-Goff sees the cross-selling of additional services obtained via M&A to JSI’s existing loyal customer base as a key route to value creation. The company has a strong M&A pipeline with which it can continue this strategy.