Virgo Investment Group Acquires Catalog Assets And Film Distribution Business Of Millennium Entertainment

REDWOOD SHORES, Calif., Aug. 21, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Virgo Investment Group ("Virgo") announced today that it has closed a partnership with management, led by CEO Bill Lee, to acquire the catalog assets and film distribution business of Millennium Entertainment (or the "Company").  Management and Virgo plan to grow the Company through investments in new content, expanding the distribution services business, and select acquisitions that complement the Company's core franchise. 

Founded in 2010 and led by co-founder and CEO Bill Lee since its inception, Millennium Entertainment is a leading independent distributor of feature films with high-quality casts.  Millennium has strong relationships with theatrical exhibitors including AMC, Regal and Landmark.  The Company also works directly with all major retailers, home entertainment and digital platforms that deliver films to consumers including Walmart, Target (where it represents 75% of all independent product), iTunes, and Netflix, as well as the VOD platforms of the major cable system operators.  Millennium has distributed over 300 feature films since its inception in November 2010.  Currently the Company is prepping the release of Matthew Weiner's (Mad Men) upcoming dramedy Are You Here starring Owen Wilson, Zach Galifianakis and Amy Poehler, and is handling the ancillary release of the documentary James Cameron's DEEPSEA CHALLENGE 3D. The Company recently handled the theatrical release of Persecuted, starring James Remar opening the film on 700+ screens; the release of Killing Season, starring Robert De Niro and John Travolta, which has generated $6 million on VOD platforms to date; and the traditional theatrical release of John Turturro's Fading Gigolo, co-starring Turturro, Woody Allen, Vanessa Paradis, Sharon Stone and Sofia Vergara.     

"We share Bill Lee's vision and are excited to partner with Bill and the Millennium management team," said Mark Perez, a Partner at Virgo.  Perez went on to say, "We believe the confluence of recent changes in the competitive landscape, expanding demand for new content and the on-going evolution of physical and digital consumption create an attractive market seam for developing an innovative distributor and financier of high quality media content.  Millennium's existing catalog of 665 film titles creates a solid foundation and base of cash flows for additional investments.  Furthermore, consistent with our other asset-based investments in the media sector, we believe there is a unique opportunity to combine industry relationships and data analysis to drive enhanced returns on invested capital through targeted marketing and differentiated monetization of content assets.  We would like to thank our operating partner network of media executives for their assistance in developing our thesis and due diligencing the transaction."

Bill Lee stated, "I'm proud of our team and thankful for our customers, clients, film production partners and bankers as we have grown the business over the last three and a half years.  This transaction creates new opportunities to further establish the company as a customer-centric curator of high-quality content.  I am pleased to invest my own capital alongside Virgo and am confident that Virgo's values, ideas and resources will enable us to fully realize our business aspirations."

About Virgo

Virgo is an opportunistic, value investor.  Virgo invests in market dislocations and areas of corporate change targeting both less efficient market segments and identified themes (or "market seams") in the firm's core industries.  A theme-based approach to idea generation coupled with proactive sourcing, a flexible mandate and creative transaction structuring skills, allows the firm to create differentiated opportunities and optimize risk-adjusted returns across market investment cycles.  Virgo is an actively engaged investor that seeks to contribute ideas and human capital to the harvesting of value post-investment and has a history of partnering with founder entrepreneurs, like Bill Lee, and family-owned companies to support their growth initiatives.

Founded in 2009, Virgo has committed and invested capital of $600 million and has completed 35 investments to date. 

SOURCE Virgo Investment Group

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