INDUSTRY: D&M sells Allen & Heath to Electra Partners

D&M Holdings sell off Allen & Heath. New starts for A&H and former group partner Denon?

Allen & Heath D&M Holdings Electra Partners

Back in 2008, D&M Holdings continued its acquisition spree to add Allen & Heath alongside Denon to its audio Top Trumps set. But big business is a constantly moving target, where balance sheets and bottom lines often matter more than the products they make. And earlier this year, an external strategic review process signalled that a sale might be on the cards, which at the time pitched the potential sale at £60-70 million. Well the sale is done, and Allen & Heath are now in the  hands of Electra Partners.

The official release:

ELECTRA PARTNERS ANNOUNCES THE ACQUISITION OF ALLEN & HEATH

Electra Partners is pleased to announce the acquisition of mixing console manufacturer, Allen & Heath, from D&M Holdings. £43 million of equity and debt has been provided by Electra Private Equity PLC and Allen & Heath’s management.

Founded in 1969, Allen & Heath designs and manufactures audio mixing consoles for live sound, such as concerts, theatres and houses of worship. With an experienced management team and an extensive global distribution network, the company holds a leading market position and has consistently achieved strong revenue growth for over twenty years. Allen & Heath’s existing team and distribution networks will remain in place.

Commenting on this acquisition, Alex Fortescue, Chief Investment Partner at Electra Partners said:

“The ability to invest across the capital structure, in this case funding both the equity and debt instruments, is a great example of Electra’s flexible investment mandate being put to work to ensure a swift completion for the vendor and a straightforward structure for the business to capitalise on both organic and acquisitive growth opportunities.”

Charles Elkington, Investment Partner at Electra Partners added:

“Allen & Heath is a leader in a niche market with an excellent track record of year-on-year growth. We believe that the company has a bright future and we will be looking to work with Glenn Rogers and his team to grow the business through further investment in new product development, improved marketing and distribution, and through acquisition.”

Glenn Rogers, Managing Director at Allen & Heath, said:

“We are very excited about working with Electra Partners and the opportunities it presents for the next phase of Allen & Heath’s growth. We have an excellent catalogue of existing products and a number of exciting prospects in development. We see opportunity for expansion into new areas and look forward to building Allen & Heath’s long-term future alongside Electra Partners.”

The Electra Partners deal team for this transaction included Charles Elkington, Ian Wood and Shakira Adigun-Boaye.

This is the fourth investment Electra Partners has announced this year, following the previously announced co-investment in CALA Group and the acquisitions of AXIO Data Group and the EP I Secondary Portfolio.

Electra Partners was advised by Taylor Wessing LLP. Allen & Heath and D&M Holdings were advised by Houlihan Lokey and Ropes & Gray International LLP.

Electra Partners refers to Electra Partners LLP acting on behalf of its client Electra Private Equity PLC.

At the time of the D&M takeover, the DJ industry worried that A&H being in the same stable as Denon might see a merging of the businesses. Denon did bring out a string of DN-X mixers post-D&M takeover but stopped in 2010, giving A&H free run at the mixer market with the wondrously lovely DB2 and DB4. But other than sharing tradeshow stands and corporate email addresses, they’ve remained quite separate.

It’s anyone’s guess at to why D&M chose to offload A&H, but I feel A&H will be better for it. They have their own identity, perhaps from being fiercely Cornish  (one recent email even said “over the border into England”), or just simply from always doing things their own way. I for one am looking forward to the “exciting prospects” that MD Glenn Rogers alludes to. And let’s hope that Denon DJ can begin to flourish as the only DJ company in the D&M camp.

Best of English British Allen & Heath!

Mark Settle
Mark Settle

The old Editor of DJWORX - you can now find Mark at WORXLAB

Articles: 1228

23 Comments

  1. Any commentary or speculation? I worry for the Xone brand, and could anticipate “a restructuring as we decide to focus on our core product lines.”

      • Here’s the thing — mixer sales for everyone are on the slide, and everyone else’s controller offerings are way more popular. So tough decisions must be made. I hope that they continue with the xone brand as other companies need something to aspire to. The db4 in particular is as aspirational as it gets.

        • I know…i have a db4 ;-)
          But pio and a&h are the two brands who are kings in the mixer market, so my guess is the will continue.
          And controllers might be more popular, but i have not seen any topjock (techno/house) play without a dj mixer either with controllers or cdjs.
          I think all in one controllers are a long way from entering the booth as a mainstay..

  2. My mouth is also watering (and the wallet is cowering) at the “exciting prospects”. Taking the digitalness of the DB series and updating the 464 for example – a DB464.
    .
    In fact I’d be happy with a DB92. The big thing holding me back from buying a DB4 was the features of the 92 they threw out.

  3. The mixers for live sound are still going to be sold, but the dj mixer market has stagnated. I’ve asked Ecler if they were bringing something new anytime soon, but they completely stopped their mixer R&D department.

    I can’t really imagine A&H bringing anything new in the DJ mixer area anytime soon

  4. I was turned away from Allen & Heath by their poor product quality and customer service (I had the Xone DX). I hope for Electra Partners’ sake that they take a new look at A&H’s current “team.”

      • Based on my experience I’ve had with the Xone DX (booth output stopped working, some LED’s wouldn’t fire, some buttons wouldn’t trigger, and then the device would reboot while spinning live). Sure I’ve heard the 4D is “great,” but the DX leaves much to be desired. And then the replacement unit they sent me (months later) had the left and right deck sections pop out of the main body because they weren’t installed correctly.

        • Based on you all of your complains, it may looks like all issue are power supply related. Overpower or viceversa. Like plugging the mixer into a 230v socket while the mixer was set to 220v, or it can simply happen because of a bad ac/dc.

  5. Fix for the xone k2 audio driver on windows pls. Also upgrade costumer service, first time i contacted it about the issue above they told me “drivers are not supposed to work on windows 8 at the time. Only win7 and mac os.” The second time around i got this ” drivers are only working properly on windows xp”. 30 ms latency asio ftw. Random rant over.

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