Bending Spoons

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Welcome back!

I have a special deep dive piece today, where I take look a rollup strategy that hadn’t gotten much attention until recently. Today we’re talking about Bending Spoons.

This is one of my favorite rollup stories to follow and while I’ve been tracking them for a while, they’re actually a recent leveraged loan issuer. Obviously, this conversation will be public in nature and will not refer to any materials they’ve provided lenders. They came to the TLB market recently to raise a $600mm TLB, with UOP to fund the Brightcove deal + to bolster cash for future M&A. S&P estimated a 5x ‘24E Leveraged Ratio (it’s more like a turn or two lower) and rated them B+/Stable.

Bending Spoons is an Italian software company that acquires consumer mobile apps, focusing on improving the profitability of apps with an established user base rather than starting from scratch. Their strategy focuses on 1) monetization (generally aggressively raising prices) 2) adding new features and 3) centralizing the team (lay off acquired employees). The Company has over 100 digital products, 300mm monthly active users, and ~90% of revenue generated from consumers on subscription plans.