Investment Strategy

Dale Capital Group invests either in controlling interests or at least in influential stakes, in both private businesses and publicly-quoted companies. In the latter case, we aim to achieve private equity-style returns through rigorous active ownership.

Dale’s private equity investment strategy is as follows:

  • Dale will build a portfolio of investments focused in Africa, so as to become an attractive, boutique African private equity company.
  • The principal underlying investments will be structured within a protected cell structure (AGAPE-PCC), so as to ensure that the business risks of each transaction are legally ring-fenced within the relevant sectorial or geographical cell that is established for that purpose.
  • Dale will maintain the flexibility to invest whenever the market conditions and risk/reward profiles are most favorable. No target weightings by country or sector are proposed.
  • Dale has moved its strategy from being focused only on Southern African Development Community (SADC), and sub-Saharan Africa now becomes its footprint.
  • Dale’s own target and range of transaction sizes will typically be those with an enterprise value of US$5m – US$50m (although both larger and smaller transactions will be considered).
  • Dale’s invest / transaction focus will be much broader, and yet remain within core sectors including but not limited to expansion or late-stage development capital situations and management buy-outs and buy-ins.
  • Dale will back strong management teams and motivate them with equity participation in their companies.
  • Dale is an active investor that will sit on the investee company boards to focus strategic decisions, accelerate growth and drive value creation and transparency.

As often as possible, Dale Capital Group will also seek to structure its investment in a manner that gives it seniority to existing equity investors and guaranteed interim cash flows, while retaining the full upside available to equity investors. In line with this strategy, investments are often made via preference shares or convertible debt instruments.

The company believes that, consistent with its strategy of investing for long-term capital growth, it will typically hold investments for an average of around three to five years. Dale will, however, have no pre-defined constraints on the holding period for its investments, and will instead consider potential exits on a case-by-case basis. Where realistic value-creation plans are likely to take significant time to implement, the company may hold investments for a longer time period.