Heliad Equity Partners GmbH & Co. KGaA: Heliad completes financing with AlphaPet Ventures

Frankfurt/Main, June 2, 2017 - Munich-based digital company AlphaPet Ventures GmbH, known as operator of the premium pet animal platforms www.petspremium.de and www.hundeland.de, completed a growth financing round of more than EUR 13 million in May 2017. Of this amount EUR 10 million equity was raised from well-known family offices with a consumer goods background, as well as from existing shareholders. Deutsche Handelsbank also provides EUR 3 million working capital as a strong growth partner.

The company was established last year in a merger between the two eCommerce companies pets Premium GmbH and ePetWorld GmbH and positioned itself as a digital brand developer with multi-channel sales. This year the company targets revenues of more than 50 million EUR. In addition to the already heavily invested Family Office Reimann Investors, further international family offices with a consumer goods background joined as investors in the current financing round. They will strongly support AlphaPet with their competences in the areas of brand building and retail sales. In addition, the existing shareholders Heliad Equity Partners, Venture Stars and Mountain Partners also invested in the round.

Thomas Hanke CEO of Heliad Equity Partners comments: "We are delighted that the company has been so successful both in terms of operations and investments since our initial investment in 2014. The team set up a scalable organization and managed to establish itself as a market leader in the premium pet animal market and now has sufficient funding to further develop the business model successfully. "

The premium segment in the domestic animal sector is developing rapidly and follows human dietary trends. Organic food, health, a sustainable method of production, natural ingredients and transparency play an increasingly important role.

Stefan Pfannmöller, Founding Partner of VentureStars and Managing Director of AlphaPet Ventures, said: "The digitization of trade and the fast growth in the premium home animal market are two strong trends in which AlphaPet is well positioned to gain additional market share. The capital raised will primarily serve the expansion of the digital brand strategy in order to establish further innovative brands in a multi-channel approach to the market. The groups first private label brand already has mid-seven-digit annual sales after just over a year and is available in more than 500 offline stores."

Simon Leicht, Managing Director responsible for digital development and sales activities of the Group's private label business states: "By combining digital brand development and eCommerce, we are pursuing a dominant business model. Our access to the online customer base as well as our digital DNA and our market insights enable us to efficiently integrate a large part of the value chain."

Marco Hierling, founder and managing director of the group states: "The fast post-merger integration of pets Premium and ePetWorld has allowed us to realize the synergy potential as the largest player in the premium segment of the online pet animal market at an early stage and to further increase customer and revenue growth. We are pleased that we are now in a very attractive market position, which allows us to further drive our business model as a digital brand developer with multi-channel sales. Our new strategy of private label brands and the ramp up of sales activities in the stationary market will in the midterm make up more than 50 percent of our revenue and will contribute strongly to our profitability. "

About Heliad

Heliad (ISIN: DE000A0L1NN5 / Ticker: HPBK) is a German listed company focusing on young and fast-growing non-listed and listed private equity companies in the German-speaking countries. Through its "Evergreen" structure, Heliad can operate without any fixed running time and can support entrepreneurs flexibly, individually and consistently on every stage of growth. In combination with an active, "hands-on" investment approach, Heliad is thus in a position to achieve significant excess returns in relation to other investment companies and equity funds for its shareholders. The Heliad shares thus benefit private and institutional investors from the chances of a diversified portfolio of the most interesting disruptive growth companies in the German-speaking countries by means of a daily liquid dividend stock. Information about Heliad can be found at www.heliad.com.

Contact
Heliad Equity Partners GmbH & Co. KGaA
Grüneburgweg 18
60322 Frankfurt/Main
Tel.: +49 (0)69 71 91 59 65 0
E-mail: investor-relations@heliad.com