Spire Capital invested in Nassau Broadcasting Partners, L.P. in March 2003. Nassau Broadcasting Partners, L.P., a radio broadcasting company, focused on building clusters of local radio stations in demographically attractive areas surrounding major metropolitan markets. At the time of Spire’s initial investment, Nassau owned and operated thirteen stations, six FM and seven AM, located in four markets in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The four markets: Trenton, NJ; Monmouth-Ocean, NJ; Allentown, PA; and Wilkes Barre-Scranton, PA covered approximately 3.1 million listeners. Nassau’s stations, due to their strong Class B signals, reached much further than their Arbitron footprints. As a result of this extended reach, Nassau has had considerable success selling into areas outside of its immediate markets and had reached over owning 50 radio stations.
Spire Capital invested in Encoda Systems, Inc. in June 2001. Under Spire Capital’s management, Encoda Systems provided proprietary software products and services that managed advertising and programming for use in the broadcast television, radio and cable industries. Spire Capital exited the investment in Encoda Systems in November 2004 to Harris Corporation.
Spire Capital invested in Vivax, Inc. in March 2001. Vivax provided cable television services in tier II and tier III markets in Brazil. Under Spire Capital management, Vivax offered pay-TV video services and a broadband Internet product providing service in excess of 300,000 unique customers. Vivax in February 2006 underwent an IPO process.
Spire Capital invested in Inflow, Inc. in June 2000. Under Spire Capital’s management, Inflow provided equipment colocation and value-added services for mission-critical e-business and data communications applications through secure, redundant, carrier-neutral data network exchange facilities. The Company’s focus was on small and medium-sized businesses with complex networking needs. The Inflow colocation strategy was to 1) target Tier II Internet cities which are less competitive; 2) build smaller sized data centers which accelerates speed to market; and 3) focus on smaller enterprise and e-commerce companies which may have a higher need for Inflow’s value-added services. The Company provided high-performance, reliable network connections to maximize the performance of its customers’ applications which they, in turn, provide for their business partners and customers. Services provided included server equipment colocation, direct high-speed connections, redundant power, fire suppression and security systems. In addition, Inflow offered value-added services such as redundant multi-carrier Internet access, application monitoring, managed firewall services, web-site load balancing, content distribution, intelligent routing and data storage services. Spire Capital exited the investment in Inflow in January 2005 to SunGuard.
Spire Capital invested in iNNERHOST, Inc. in June 2000. iNNERHOST provided shared and complex web hosting services to small and medium-sized businesses. In August 2002, Spire Capital aquired a significant equity holding in Interland due to the acquisition made by Interland for iNNERHOST. Interland provided web-hosting services to small and medium-sized enterprises (“SMEs”) concentrated in the United States. Interland’s products and services included shared, dedicated, and clustered-hosting services, database services, domain name registration services, back-up storage, and other application hosting services. Spire Capital liquidated its holdings during 2003.