FirstPort

ABOUT THE INVESTMENT

FirstPort is the UK’s leading property manager. The group provides general management services to landlords and residents of 196,000 properties across almost 4,000 developments around the UK.

We acquired FirstPort, together with its sister company Appello, a leading technology-enabled care provider, in 2012 in a complex carve-out from a UK corporate which was in administration. The new company established to make the acquisition was called Knight Square.

At the time, FirstPort was financially robust but operationally poor. We saw the opportunity to add focus by separating FirstPort and Appello, and then to restructure FirstPort’s operations in order to create a business which could build on its market leadership positions through a new organic and inorganic growth strategy.

This strategy has transformed FirstPort into a business delivering best-in-class service built on a solid operational platform supported by a significant IT investment. With this in place we have added business development, sales and marketing and contract mobilisation resources to allow the business to move into a growth phase, whilst also completing two add-on acquisitions.

We sold FirstPort to a European private equity fund in September 2019. We continue with our investment in Appello.

“Epiris has been hugely supportive as we have worked to revitalise FirstPort. Together we have built a great business delivering exceptional service for customers and clients.” (Nigel Howell, CEO of FirstPort)