Apollo backs $300M continuation fund for Appalachian drinks maker Mountaintop
What's the deal? Monogram Capital PartnersDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → on Tuesday closed a roughly $300 million single-asset continuation fund for its portfolio company, Mountaintop Beverage. Apollo S3 led the vehicle, which lets the Beverly Hills-based mid-market PE firm hold the asset beyond its original fund's life.
Who else is in? Investors atypical for secondaries joined the deal: Partners CapitalDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, an outsourced chief investment office (OCIO) managing more than $75 billion, and H7 CapitalDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, a single-family office. TIFF, an employee-owned OCIO with about $10 billion in assets and a longtime Monogram backer, rolled part of its stake, took some liquidity, and committed fresh capital.
Why now? Mountaintop, held in Monogram's 2022 flagship fund, needs capital to expand manufacturing amid rapid growth—a process that could take two to three years. That timeline outlasts the fund's remaining life, so Monogram rolled the asset into a continuation vehicle. Most existing investors chose to cash out.
What's the endgame? The Morgantown, WV company uses low-acid aseptic processing, a technique that extends beverage shelf life without preservatives or refrigeration, to make drinks for coffee, dairy, tea, protein, and plant-based milk brands. The new capital will expand its footprint from 330,000 to nearly 600,000 square feet.
How it came together: Apollo and Monogram first connected late last year over a co-investment to finance a Mountaintop add-on. That deal fell through, but the two built a rapport that led to the continuation transaction.
Stein said the space is hard to enter and hard to staff, as few people are trained on the processing technology. Monogram spent two years trying to buy an incumbent before building the platform from scratch, assembling a management team and securing long-term contracts with blue-chip customers before committing capital.
The signal: Apollo's check was smaller than usual. "The potential upside got them so excited that they were willing to write a smaller check than they might otherwise write," Stein said. As continuation funds proliferate, the deal shows large secondaries buyers reaching into niche, hard-to-access industrial assets in pursuit of upside.
Image credit: Abhisek Sarda
Read more: Yahoo Finance
