SCF Partners’ 2024 Year in Review
2024 was a very active and productive year for SCF Partners, highlighted by:
- Strong overall financial performance from our portfolio companies
- Record dividend yields and strong distributions
- Addition of 4 new platform companies, 3 of which included a substantial amount of co-invest from existing investors
- Launch and final close of Fund X
- Strengthening of SCF’s leadership team
- Continued growth into energy infrastructure and transition markets
Portfolio Company Performance and Distributions
Free cash flow generation from our private portfolio companies was extremely strong, resulting in 14 of our 19 private portfolio companies paying dividends totaling $197 million, representing an approximate 21% dividend yield against those companies’ cost basis. In addition, SCF generated an additional $108 million in distributions from sales of private and public company shares.
In total, $305 million was distributed, exceeding our 2024 goals.
Over the past several years, our companies have worked hard to streamline operations, strengthen their balance sheets, and generate free cashflow to support both internal growth and cash distributions to shareholders. Combining 2023 and 2024, the portfolio paid total dividends of $322 million, representing an average 16% annual dividend yield on the related cost basis, all while maintaining overall leverage at 1.2x Debt / EBIDTA (Oct ‘24) on the private companies.
Fund X
We are also proud that we successfully closed the fund raising for our Fund 10 in June of 2024. Legacy investors committed approximately 80% of the SCF X capital, and we were also successful bringing in 24 new investors into the fund.
New Platform Investments
SCF closed 3 new platform investments to close out the investment phase of Fund 9 and added our first new platform for Fund 10:
Camin Cargo (Fund IX)
February 2024
Global provider of independent testing, inspection and certification services for liquid fuels. Learn more
Flowchem (Fund IX)
March 2024
Leading provider of chemicals to enhance flow in liquid pipelines, which reduces pipelines operators’ energy costs and emissions. Learn more
Newpark Fluid Systems (Fund IX)
September 2024
Leading global oil & gas and geothermal fluids solutions and related services provider. Learn more
Critical Flow Solutions (Fund X)
August 2024
Market leader in providing severe service valves to the refining and petrochemical industries. Learn more
Portfolio Company Development and Transition Growth Initiatives
SCF’s portfolio companies were active with both internal initiatives and strategic acquisitions to gain additional exposure to growth markets related to critical energy infrastructure development, energy transition, and related industrial markets. In total, SCF’s current private portfolio revenues are derived as follows:
- 59% exposure to oil and gas production;
- 22% to energy infrastructure development, modification and maintenance;
- 11% to decarbonization, renewables, and energy transition;
- 8% to related markets, including electrification, water, utilities, and other industrial sectors.
Our overall strategy of investing in market leading service and product companies with roots in traditional energy, and helping them strategically migrate into growth markets continues to work well, and is delivering strong returns.
Centurion acquired H2M Offshore Accommodations, a global supplier of high-quality offshore accommodation and workspace modules to the offshore wind sector.
TDW Acquired Petro-Line, a premier provider of unique, patented pipeline repair and maintenance products and services.
BCCK & Carbon Clean signed a carbon capture agreement to provide Carbon Clean’s semi-modular CaptureX technology to customers across the US.
Centurion announced the completion of the sale of its legacy construction business Centurion Canada Infrastructure, formerly SITE Resources Group, to the Hillcore Group.
Westbrook Energy Group achieved a transformative goal by gaining its AS9100 certification, a globally recognize standard for quality management systems tailored to the aerospace industry.
D2Zero acquired Kelton Engineering, a provider of precision measurement technology and data analytics.
MPC Kinetic continues strong progress on the Golden Plains Wind Farm.
D2Zero company Hydrasun, was awarded a substantial contract by BP and Aberdeen City Council to design, supply and install hydrogen production packages for a new city-scale hydrogen hub in Aberdeen.
SCF Partners announced D2Zero, a new leader in decarbonizing energy and industry. D2Zero combines differentiated technologies and solutions to help customers across a range of industries deliver on their decarbonization and net zero objectives.
BCCK introduced an enhanced nitrogen rejection unit delivering unparalleled results in efficiency and emissions control.
Newpark Drilling Fluids opened a Technical Center of Excellence in collaboration with Gas & Oil Technologies – GOtech in Saudi Arabia.
Contract Resources Continues International Deployment of Proprietary ‘Cat Spider’ Technology
SCF Team Development
We are extremely proud to announce the promotion of 4 new Managing Directors, positioning us with strong leadership for the future:
Garrett Jackson joined the firm as an Analyst and during the course of his career earned his MBA from Rice in 2017 while maintaining a full-time role at SCF. Garrett has long played a key role in a number of our significant investments including Pipeline Plastics and Taurus; and more recently led the investments in Westbrook, Camin Cargo and Critical Flow Solutions. Garrett also plays a leadership role in SCF’s investor development initiatives.
Hugh Sheppard joined SCF from HBS after completing his MBA in 2016. He initially worked in the Aberdeen office playing a significant role in the investments in Centurion, Score Group and Hydrasun before relocating to Australia in 2021. Hugh has since led the investment in Callidus and worked closely with SCF’s three other Australian platforms (Shelf, MPK, and Contract Resources).
Deviyani Misra-Godwin joined the firm after completing her MBA at HBS in 2018. Deviyani led SCF’s successful divestiture of Variperm in 2024 and continues to actively manage our investments in BCCK and CSP Permian. More recently, she played a key role in the investments in TD Williamson and Newpark Fluids Systems. Deviyani also leads the firm’s recruiting efforts to build out our broader investment team.
Dan West joined the firm after obtaining a law degree and MBA at Harvard in 2018. Dan has played a key role with ProDirectional, Frontier and a number of companies in the SCF Ventures portfolio and more recently led SCF’s investment in Flowchem. Dan has also played a significant role in the development of SCF’s Energy Transition strategy and is assuming the leadership of SCF’s investment efforts in Canada.
We are also excited about the additions of Cathryn Hart and Amanda Studebaker, two new Senior Associates who bring a wealth of technical and leadership experience from both traditional and transitional energy experiences.
Cathryn Hart graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2018 with dual degrees in chemical engineering and writing. She began her career at Pioneer Natural Resources, where she held various technical and operational roles before transitioning into business development and corporate strategy. Prior to joining SCF, Cathryn earned an MBA and MS in Engineering from Harvard.
Amanda Studebaker graduated from Rice University in 2013 with a degree in bioengineering. She joined Baker Hughes as a field engineer and over a nearly 10-year career held engineering and operational management roles across the U.S., Europe, Asia, and South America. She graduates from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business in June 2025 and will join SCF post-graduation.
SCF’s team now encompasses geographic coverage across North America, UK/Europe, and Australasia, and possesses expertise across both traditional and transitional energy, and financial and technical disciplines.
Energy and Climate Innovation and Impact
During 2024, SCF continued to support the development of three important non-profit organizations focused on energy and climate innovation and progress.
- Tex-E is a partnership between MIT, University of Texas, Texas A&M University, Prairie View A&M University, University of Houston, and Rice University to help identify and train future founders and leaders in key areas of energy and climate innovation.
- OpenMinds is a global coalition of 125 energy and climate organizations, companies, NGO’s and academic institutions, supported by Bain & Company, working together to remove key bottlenecks to energy and climate progress.
- Greentown Labs is the largest clean-tech incubator in the US, and is currently home to over 150 startups based in Boston and Houston.
David Baldwin, one of our Partners, founded Tex-E and OpenMinds, and recently provided significant growth capital to Greentown Labs. Other Individuals at our firm have either provided capital or contributed to the progress at one or more of these organizations.
In addition to the important civic impact of each organization, SCF benefits by seeing a wide cross section of new technologies and future leaders across electrification, decarbonization, renewables, energy efficiency, and climate mitigation segments.
2025 – Looking Ahead
Overall spending for energy and related climate initiatives is expected to continue to grow in 2025, as the world continues to need more energy, while also reducing emissions.
Spending related to oil development is expected to moderate as the market absorbs slow demand growth in China and excess global supply. Natural gas infrastructure spending is expected to continue to show strong global growth as Europe, the developing world, and North American electricity demand will rely heavily on natural gas as a fuel source. Cost competitive renewables including solar, batteries, and onshore wind will continue to support strong growth in spending. As the world continues to shift more of its energy reliance towards electricity, all services and products related to electrical infrastructure and efficiency will also see strong growth.
Spending for other clean energy sources such as offshore wind, nuclear, hydrogen, geothermal, and carbon capture will continue to be volatile until they become reliably cost competitive with other sources of energy. We continue to monitor the development of those technologies / markets and will add exposure as they become more cost competitive.
SCF’s goals for 2025 include increasing distributions through continued strong dividend performance and the sale of 2 – 3 well positioned portfolio companies. We also anticipate making 2 new platform investments focused on the key themes above while continuing to support our existing portfolio companies’ growth into energy transition and infrastructure markets.
In Closing . . .
SCF continues to enhance our team, market coverage, and strategy to take advantage of the world’s continuing appetite for more energy while reducing emissions. We will focus on building service companies to meet these goals, and to deliver superior investment returns for our investors.
We are grateful to our longstanding and new investors, our portfolio company leaders, and our advisors and friends that support SCF’s continued progress and results.
The SCF Team