Heliad Equity Partners GmbH & Co. KGaA: The Heliad e-commerce portfolio shows extraordinarily strong growth (news with additional features)

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Frankfurt am Main, June 8, 2016

- The Heliad e-commerce portfolio shows extraordinarily strong growth

- A new online market leader in the premium pet market has been created via the ePetWorld and pets Premium "merger of equals"

- A seven-figure Series A financing round has been successfully concluded for Cubitabo GmbH (BettenRiese) and, simultaneously, it has rolled out its store brand "buddy"

- Springlane opened " Grillgarage " in Dusseldorf and expanding the private label and community strategy successfully

- A lead investment has been made in MUUME, the leading technology platform for digitalization of retail processes

Frankfurt am Main, June 8, 2016

The e-commerce portfolio of Heliad Equity Partners, a listed investment company that focuses on listed and unlisted companies in German-speaking countries that are facing special situations, is showing convincing, extraordinarily strong growth. CEO Thomas Hanke states: "In the last months, we were able to celebrate great progress on all our e-commerce investments. These successes include strong business performance by our portfolio companies, the conclusion of important financing rounds, and the merger of ePetWorld GmbH and pets Premium GmbH into Alphapet Ventures GmbH."

Heliad held a significant investment in pets Premium GmbH and ePetWorld GmbH. At the end of May 2016, these two online pet products dealers were merged to form the leading multi-brand pet product platform in Germany. Heliad continues to hold a significant share in the newly created company, Alphapet Ventures GmbH, within which the following brands will be independently promoted: pets Premium (www.petspremium.de), Hundeland (www.hundeland.de), Katzenland (www.katzenland.de), and Leinentausch (www.leinentausch.de). The merged company will have total revenues in the mid two-digit millions, and thus has become a powerful player in the market.

There is also positive news about Cubitabo GmbH, which Heliad has financed and helped grow since it was founded. Since 2014, Cubitabo GmbH has operated BettenRiese (www.bettenriese.de), a well-positioned shop in the online sleeping products market, and, in 2016, it again showed strong growth by successfully launching the innovative mattress brand "buddy" (www.buddysleep.de). The financial basis of its business successes will be a seven-figure Series A financing from a strategic investor. This has allowed Cubitabo to reach important milestones, which will pave the way to reaching the break-even point while maintaining strong growth.

After its large and successful financing round in 2015, Heliad's portfolio company Springlane GmbH (www.springlane.de), the leading platform for kitchen and cooking products in the German-speaking world, continued to grow very strongly thanks to its existing investors and new strategic investors. It was in particular able to significantly increase its lead over the competition in the area of community building and social media recognition. It is also successfully creating Springlane store brands, and the first weeks of its offline store, the Springlane Grillgarage in Düsseldorf, a shop dedicated to barbecue products, were very promising.

Finally, at the beginning of June, Heliad Equity Partners acquired the MUUME Group AG (www.muume.com) in Switzerland as a new portfolio company. This company was able to raise a total of CHF 2.2 million with a Series A financing round that also included other well-known partners. MUUME develops solutions to digitalize existing processes and offline retail customer relationships. MUUME uses a white-label approach to allow its B2B customers to further cement relationships with their retail customers via diverse services such as payments, loyalty programs, in-app ordering, and product presentation. Thomas Hanke states: "We warmly welcome MUUME to our portfolio, and are pleased to make this investment at the intersection of two areas we know well: fintech and e-commerce. We are convinced that MUUME will play a decisive role in the digitalization of offline retail and, thus, in the creation of a significant link between online and offline business."

Contact
Heliad Equity Partners GmbH & Co. KGaA
Grüneburgweg 18
60322 Frankfurt am Main

Investor Relations
Tel.: +49 (0)69 71 91 59 65 0
E-mail: investor-relations@heliad.com

About HELIAD EQUITY PARTNERS

Heliad (ISIN: DE000A0L1NN5 / Ticker symbol: HPBK) is a listed investment company that focuses on listed and unlisted companies in German-speaking companies that are facing special situations. Its "evergreen" structure allows it to act independently of usual fund lifecycles and to apply a flexible and entrepreneurial approach in order to take advantage of the opportunities that special situations present.

This, combined with our proactive, hands-on approach to investments allows us to achieve significantly higher returns for our shareholders than conventional private equity funds. With an average annual NAV performance of over 25% since 2012, Heliad is currently one of the most successful listed investment companies worldwide.

With Heliad shares, both private and institutional investors have a stock with daily liquidity that allows them to benefit from the opportunities offered by a diversified special situations portfolio.

Contact:
Heliad Equity Partners GmbH & Co. KGaA
Phone: +49 69 71 91 59 65 0
E-mail: investor-relations@heliad.com