Houlihan Lokey Advises Registrar Corp

Houlihan Lokey is pleased to announce that Registrar Corp (Registrar), a portfolio company of Bertram Capital (Bertram), has been acquired by Paine Schwartz Partners, a private equity firm specializing in sustainable food chain investing. The transaction closed on August 26, 2021.

Registrar, headquartered in Hampton, Virginia, is a leading provider of U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) compliance software and services to food, medical device, drug, and cosmetic facilities all over the world. The transaction represents Bertram’s 18th exit since its launch in 2006. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Since Bertram’s investment in Registrar, the company has invested heavily in the development of the Compliance Monitor, an advanced compliance software solution for importers, retailers, and manufacturers. In addition, the company has become one of the leading online food safety training providers in the industry, offering self-paced, asynchronous courses, including the only PCQI and FSSC fully online certified courses in the market.

Registrar Corp was founded in 2003 to help businesses comply with FDA regulations. Since opening its headquarters in Hampton, Registrar Corp has expanded to 19 worldwide offices and serves more than 30,000 companies across 175 countries. Employees include former U.S. FDA officials, scientists, and industry experts.

Bertram Capital is a private equity firm targeting investments in lower middle-market companies. Since its inception in 2006, the firm has raised over $2.2 billion of capital commitments. In addition to supplying strategic growth capital, Bertram Capital leverages proprietary processes and services, Bertram High-5sm and Bertram Labs, to empower its portfolio companies to unlock their full business potential. The Bertram High-5sm is an operationally focused value creation strategy, which includes management augmentation, operational initiative implementation, complementary business acquisition, sales and marketing improvements, and leveraging technology and IP. The cornerstone of this strategy is Bertram Labs, its in-house technology team, which seeks to drive growth and value through digital marketing, e-commerce, big data and analytics, application development, and internal and external platform optimization.

A global leader in sustainable food chain investing, Paine Schwartz Partners is a private equity firm focused exclusively on investment opportunities in the fast-growing, dynamic global food and agribusiness sectors. The firm's investment, operations, and finance professionals invest throughout cycles across the food and agribusiness value chain and bring a collaborative and active management approach to portfolio companies.

Houlihan Lokey served as the exclusive financial advisor and assisted in marketing, structuring, and negotiating the transaction on behalf of Registrar and Bertram. This deal exemplifies the continued success of Houlihan Lokey’s dedicated coverage of the testing, inspection, certification, and compliance market, with complementary expertise in platforms that support food safety and enable compliance for facilities in essential end-markets.