Yosemite valley on a beautiful day with the majestic El Capitan in the left foreground.
Photos courtesy of Chris Daniel.
LCap
Located in Yosemite National Park, El Capitan’s iconic granite walls dominate the west end of Yosemite Valley. At more than 3,000 feet (900+ m) above the valley floor, it is 2.5 times as tall as the Empire State Building, or more than 3 times as high as the top of the Eiffel Tower. The view of El Capitan is a beacon for park visitors, a muse for photographers, and climbing El Capitan is one of the world’s ultimate challenges for rock climbers. In 1851 while exploring the valley the Spanish named the granite cliff El Capitan, or "The Capitan," a testament to its imposing nature. In local circles the name often gets shortened to "L Cap." Source: yosemite.com and Wikipedia.
Yosemite is a special place for Mr. Daniel, spending every summer there as a child, a tradition he has continued with his family.
Our Approach
We leverage relationships developed over 25 years to partner with other family investment offices, institutional investors, business owners, management teams and private equity firms to invest private debt and/or equity capital to complete buyout transactions, provide growth capital, or recapitalize a company's balance sheet. We implement best practices developed over a long and successful investment history to work directly with entrepreneurs and management teams, advising on financial management, capital raising initiatives and business strategy and operations with the ultimate goal of unlocking and realizing shareholder value.
Experience
Chris Daniel, Managing Partner
Mr. Daniel is the Managing Partner of LCap Investment Partners LLC, a vehicle formed in strategic partnership with a multi-billion dollar family office to provide private capital and strategic guidance to leading middle market companies in the US. Chris is a veteran investor with over 25 years of lending and private equity investment experience, including senior roles at several prominent lower middle market firms where he has participated in fund formation, management and investment of the funds. Over the course of his career, he has developed a strong network and working relationships with investors, financial sponsors, intermediaries, other lenders and directly with companies with an emphasis on sourcing and actively managing investments in small companies. Having invested over $1.5 billion during his career, Mr. Daniel has been involved in all aspects of the investment process: originating, evaluating, structuring/documenting, closing, monitoring and exiting private investments at all levels of the capital structure. He is a hands-on investor, having been a member or observer on over twenty portfolio company boards, including as chairman and controlling shareholder.
Over his investment career, Mr. Daniel has been directly involved in investing $1.5 billion of private debt and equity capital including $515 million of mezzanine debt and equity in 40 lower middle market companies. These investments have a total realized value of $800 million and currently a total value (realized and unrealized) representing 1.9x invested capital.
Prior to forming LCap, Chris was a founder of Lake Country Capital, a private debt and equity SBIC investment fund. Mr, Daniel has also held senior roles at Gladstone Investment (business development company), Churchill (commercial finance company), Praesidian Capital (an SBIC fund) and Windjammer Capital (a debt and private equity fund). Early in his career Chris was credit trained at Citicorp Securities and was an AVP in their leveraged lending group and also worked in the management consulting division of the accounting firm E&Y Kenneth Leventhal.
Mr. Daniel received his BA in Economics and MBA in Finance and Strategy from UCLA. He lives in Manhattan Beach, CA with his wife, son and Bernese Mountain Dog, Ollie.
Investment Strategy
LCap leverages a network developed over 25 years and works with leading investment banks, regional intermediaries, co-investors, private equity firms (funded and unfunded), high net worth family offices and senior management teams to source and execute transactions.
We look for the following:
Industries:
- Business & Professional Services
- Consumer Products and Services
- Healthcare Services
- Specialty Manufacturing
- Tech-enabled Services
Company Size:
- Revenue greater than $10 million
- EBITDA greater than $3 million
Company Characteristics:
- Strong value proposition for the customer
- Market leading position in a defensible niche
- Healthy margins and predictable cash flow with high free cash flow conversion
- Proven, experienced management teams
- Ownership groups and co-investors with the capital and expertise to provide support and generate value post-closing
Transaction Types:
- Leveraged buyouts
- Management buyouts
- Growth financings
- Recapitalizations
- Shareholder Liquidity
Investment Securities:
- Senior debt
- Junior debt
- Structured equity
- Common equity
Investment Size: $5 million to $25 million