February 25, 2004
Celerity Partners Invests in O Premium Waters, Leading Provider of Home and Office Delivery of Premium Water
www.owaters.com
LOS ANGELES, CA
Celerity Partners announced today the completion of a growth equity investment in O Premium Waters (O Waters or Company). Founded in April of 2001, O Waters has rapidly become the #2 bottled home and office delivery (HOD) water company in Arizona. Celerity is making an investment in O Waters to help the Company expand in Arizona and new major metropolitan areas.
Since entering the HOD industry, O Waters has demonstrated its ability to rapidly acquire and retain long-term customers. The Company expects to gain the #1 market share in Arizona by the end of 2004. Frank Leonesio, O Waters Founder and CEO stated, “With our proven value proposition of providing the highest quality drinking water and customer service at competitive prices, we believe this is the ideal time to partner with Celerity in order to accelerate our growth strategy in Arizona and to look ahead at penetrating new geographic markets. Celerity has an established track record of working with high growth, entrepreneurial companies and assisting them with becoming sustainable industry leaders.”
Paul Behrman, a partner at Celerity who led the transaction, stated, “O Waters is truly an innovator in the bottled water industry. The Company’s unique and powerful sales and marketing function coupled with senior management’s experience of building best of breed businesses give us great confidence. We are excited about the opportunity to back Frank and his team and assist them with realizing the Company’s vast potential.”
For further information, please contact Paul Behrman at (310) 268-1710 or Frank Leonesio at (480) 962-8000.
ABOUT CELERITY PARTNERS: Celerity Partners is a private equity fund whose objective is to build businesses, in partnership with management, to preeminence in their respective markets. Since its inception in September 1995, Celerity has invested in over 40 companies with an aggregate transaction value in excess of $2 billion. Celerity currently manages approximately $200 million of equity capital and has offices in Los Angeles and Menlo Park, CA. www.celeritypartners.com
ABOUT O PREMIUM WATERS: O Waters provides home and office delivery of purified water in Arizona. The Company operates a state of the art production facility in Mesa, AZ. O Waters’ patented 10-step double purification process meets the highest standard of purification as designated by the Federal Food and Drug Administration.