Technology, Media and Telecoms

TMT represents a diverse, high growth and fast-moving sector, where deep industry knowledge and focus are critical.

We continue to target market-leading companies operating in high growth niches or industry verticals with the potential for international or inorganic expansion. Our TMT operating partners are fundamental to our sourcing and investment program.

In the technology sector, we are seeing the increasing importance of software, services, and systems to enterprises and consumers globally. Strong secular growth in the sector is driven by enterprises looking to leverage technology solutions in order to increase productivity, to enhance decision-making and risk management and to enable more effective collaboration across enterprises and stakeholders. Furthermore, the continued penetration of the cloud and virtualization (Software-as-a-service business models) is driving the effectiveness and speed with which enterprises can deploy large scale technology upgrades across their businesses.

In the media sector, technology has enabled a proliferation of traditional and user-generated “social” content and reduced the cost of distribution, thereby creating high growth business models. The continued structural shift in audience and advertising spending from traditional, off-line media to on-line and mobile media is also driving new, high-growth investment opportunities. We also observe an increasing sophistication of information and data services, which are becoming more and more valuable as users seek to make informed workflow decisions based on reliable and high quality data.

In the telecoms sector, the increasing demand for data is driving fundamental change in the industry. This demand is opening opportunities for data infrastructure providers. However, it is also placing significant capacity pressures on legacy mobile networks, which in turn is driving the need for technologies and services that can help telecom operators manage their capacity more effectively. We also observe the rise of faster mobile connectivity technologies, which is leading to a rapid shift from fixed to mobile broadband connectivity.

See our Technology, Media and Telecoms investments

Other Sector Experience

Business and Financial Services

Healthcare

Priory Group

Industrial

Retail, Consumer & Leisure

Five Below

Case Study

Oberthur Technologies

In 2011, we acquired Oberthur Technologies, the world’s second largest provider of smartcards’ based security and identification solutions and services. Our previous investment experience in the electronic payments sector and our breadth of expertise in the banking and telecommunications industries helped us realize the company’s potential across all segments: payment, telecommunications and identity. We also saw the opportunity to support client based growth from mobile operators to financial institutions via our extensive international network.

From the outset, we have been working closely with the Oberthur Technologies management team to help implement three principal avenues for growth to support the long term development of the business. Firstly, by focusing on the electronic payment sector the company will benefit from volume driven by emerging markets, as well as new developments in mature markets such as the company’s forthcoming deployment of EMV Standards in the US (move from magnetic stripes to secured chip & pin cards). Secondly, in telecommunications, the company presents an innovative and attractive offer which should benefit from strong development of NFC (Near Field Communication services). Lastly, by being one of the well established leaders of secured documents with multiple uses in the Identity Division (citizenship, healthcare, licences and conditional access) Oberthur Technologies should continue to show strong growth potential.

We will also support the company through potential external acquisitions and innovation, by increasing R&D investment, which may further enhance the technological development of the company and continue to meet customer needs and demands.

"From the outset, we have been working closely with the Oberthur Technologies management team to help implement three principal avenues for growth to support the long term development of the business."