The Ellerston JAADE Australian Private Assets Fund has completed an investment in Nitro Software Limited alongside Potentia Capital. The acquisition of 100% of Nitro by Potentia and the co-investors, saw the company delisted from the ASX where it has been listed since 2019. Founded in 2005 as an alternative to Adobe, Nitro is an emerging leader in the SaaS document productivity market with revenue of US$67m in CY22.
The Company’s Productivity Platform includes powerful PDF editing tools, digital workflows, highly secure eSigning and identity verification capabilities, which competes with tier-1 providers Adobe and DocuSign. Nitro has over 2.8 million licensed users and 14,000+ business customers across 179 countries, including over 62% of the Fortune 500.
“The investment in Nitro represents an opportunity to invest in a high growth business benefitting from strong tailwainds in the document productivity market.” highlighted David Leslie, Portfolio Manager of the JAADE Fund. “In the world we are facing where interest rate rises and other macroeconomic pressures are forcing businesses to reconsider expenditure, Nitro stands to benefit from its ability to provide a comparable or premium product at better value than larger competitors.”
Ellerston JAADE seeks to invest in minority holdings of later stage, Australian growth companies via an open-ended fund vehicle. Ellerston JAADE currently has seven other portfolio companies including Mable Technologies Pty Ltd, Phocas Group Pty Ltd and Azupay Pty Ltd.