Great Hill Partners

Horizon Telecom International

• CEO: Christopher P. Torto
• http://www.vivax.com.br

"I had the operation as lean as possible, but we were only a few years old, and not big enough to achieve scale. I knew one of my competitors was for sale, but it was a tough deal. The target was literally in bankruptcy, and we had our fair share of issues to contend with. Despite the complexities, GHP remained steadfast in their support. They helped me negotiate and finance the deal, which transformed the company into one of the industry leaders." In the mid-1990's, GHP expended considerable time and effort looking for cable television investment opportunities in Latin America. Of those studied, the most compelling, and most challenging, was to form a new business to participate in the cable concession auction planned by the Brazilian government. For this effort, GHP recruited Chris Torto, a talented American entrepreneur who was running a division in Brazil for GTech. GHP and Torto formed Horizon Telecom International and created a strategy to apply for concessions clustered in mid sized cities, primarily in the wealthy state of Sao Paulo, and waited for the Brazilian government to start the bid process that ultimately took four years. In the interim, Torto assumed the role of CEO for another GHP led telecom opportunity in the U.S., a consumer ISP, Voyager.com. Under his guidance, Voyager consummated over 25 acquisitions, went public, and was sold to a larger telecom operator. Eventually, Horizon successfully won concessions for 1.6 million homes and began operations in 2000. GHP led three rounds of financing - rounds that were increasingly difficult to attain in the face of the telecom downturn and Brazilian currency devaluation. Chris Torto efficiently managed network construction and implemented cost effective customer acquisition programs. Unfortunately, the company was unable to obtain certain key programming channels, which negatively impacted the company's subscriber acquisition efforts. In recalling the difficult times, Torto commented, "I had the operation as lean as possible, but we were only a few years old, and not big enough to achieve scale. I knew one of my competitors was for sale, but it was a tough deal. The target was literally in bankruptcy, and we had our fair share of issues to contend with. Despite the complexities, GHP remained steadfast in their support. They helped me negotiate and finance the deal, which transformed the company into one of the industry leaders." With this larger platform, Torto was able to accelerate the growth trajectory, which led to a successful IPO in Brazil in 2006 and subsequent sale to a strategic buyer.