Calculating Cleo’s valuation: 2013 to 2025

Methodology

  1. Mapped public events: known private-equity ownership/changes (Alpine Investors ownership then exit / H.I.G. affiliate growth investment in 2021), plus reporting on fundraising and the company’s SaaS transition and revenue growth under PE ownership. Kirkland & Ellis+1

  2. Used public summaries of Cleo’s funding totals and investor list (PitchBook / company profile pages) to constrain total equity raised and plausible valuation ranges for each period. PitchBook+1

  3. Applied industry-typical SaaS valuation dynamics (EV/Revenue multiple expansion as Cleo shifted to cloud/SaaS and scaled customers) and the explicit claim in PE coverage that revenue grew several-fold under Alpine — this justifies the ramp 2012–2021 and the jump around the H.I.G. growth investment. pe-insider.com

  4. For 2022–2025 I smoothed growth to reflect continued SaaS scaling, a couple of add-on acquisitions and product releases reported by the company, and (more recent) market comparables that imply mid-hundreds of millions enterprise value by 2024–2025. Yahoo Finance+1

Key public facts used

  • Cleo confirmed a strategic growth investment from an affiliate of H.I.G. Capital in June 2021 (terms undisclosed). This is the main anchor for the big valuation step in 2021. Business Wire

  • Alpine Investors exited its investment in Cleo as part of that 2021 partnership with H.I.G. — Alpine had guided Cleo through a move to SaaS and significant revenue growth during its ownership. Kirkland & Ellis+1

  • PitchBook / private-company data pages summarize Cleo’s funding history and investor list (used to constrain total equity raised and plausible valuations). PitchBook

  • PrivCo / company profile pages locate Cleo in Rockford and confirm private company status and limited public disclosure of deal terms. (This is why we must estimate rather than report exact disclosed VCs/EVs.) PrivCo

Uncertainty & caveats (important)

  • No fully-public transaction valuations for each year were available. The 2021 H.I.G. investment did not disclose price/EV, so the 2021 estimate is inferred from the scale of private equity growth investments and the company’s described revenue growth. Business Wire+1

  • Private-company databases (PitchBook, PrivCo, Tracxn, etc.) sometimes report differing funding totals or derived valuations; I used the conservative, corroborated signals (investor names, amount raised summaries, and PE press). PitchBook+1

  • The series above is best-effort: treat each year as an order-of-magnitude and trend estimate rather than a precise transaction value. If you need formal valuation figures (for M&A, audit, investment), this should be followed by access to paid private-market sources (PitchBook/CapIQ/PrivCo) or confidential financials from Cleo.

Why $30M for 2013?

  • Cleo was a decades-old EDI/communications vendor but had not yet transformed to cloud/SaaS or attracted PE-scale growth capital.

  • Industry comparables of similar midwestern, private B2B integration vendors of that period were typically valued at ~2–3× revenue; with ~$10–15M estimated revenue, that gives a ~$25–35M EV range.

  • $30M is a reasonable midpoint estimate.