Prescient Launches New Real Estate Private Equity Firm

11/15/17

Prescient, a fully integrated BIM design and building platform that dramatically reduces the time and cost of constructing multi-unit housing using a proprietary modular construction system, today announced the creation of Powered by Prescient. Powered by Prescient, a 100% subsidiary of Prescient, will acquire strategic minority stakes in promising real estate development projects throughout the United States. This will in turn help real estate developers and investors drive total building costs down significantly and positively impact time, money and risk, through the leveraging of Prescient’s technology platform and model-centric design. By partaking in a strategic equity stake at the outset of a project, Powered by Prescient will help drive needed efficiencies and productivity from concept to commercialization.

Prescient Board member and experienced real estate investor Jeff Johnson is a founder of Powered by Prescient and will lead the organization. Mr. Johnson will be responsible for building up and leading Powered by Prescient, identifying investment opportunities and driving future growth. He has also acquired a 10% equity stake in the business.

“Powered by Prescient will be an important extension of the overall Prescient enterprise, as we continue to identify compelling opportunities to help developers and investors in real estate improve time to market and secure better returns, all while maintaining an alignment of interests,” said Satyen Patel, Executive Chairman of Prescient. “I have known Jeff for a number of years, including during our time together on the Prescient board, and believe he is the model executive to help move Powered by Prescient forward. He possesses the ideal combination of extensive investment expertise, broad and deep investor and real estate developer relationships and innate leadership qualities. I am delighted to have Jeff joining us in building out Powered by Prescient.”

“Sophisticated institutional and high net worth investors are always seeking to identify a unique advantage when committing capital,” said Mr. Johnson. “Powered by Prescient is a real estate private equity firm that succeeds by using the most disruptive and innovative products available for its building projects. We integrate those building innovations with investment innovations to produce superior risk adjusted real estate returns for our investors.

“During my time as both a Board member and investor in Prescient, I have been very impressed with the consistent stream of top institutional real estate investors who are employing Prescient’s disruptive and innovative products. These leading investors are using Prescient to deliver better risk adjusted returns to their investors, and we plan on pursuing the same strategy at Powered by Prescient. The Powered by Prescient team is off to a tremendous start and I am incredibly excited to grow this business moving forward.”

Mr. Johnson is the Managing Partner for Lakeshore Holdings, LLC, a real estate private equity firm. Prior to that, he was Chief Executive Officer of Dividend Capital Diversified Property Fund, the largest public NAV REIT in the U.S. He also served as Chief Investment Officer and Chairman of the Investment Committee at Equity Office Properties Trust and its predecessors, the largest publicly traded REIT and owner/manager of U.S. office properties, until the company was acquired by Blackstone Group for $39 billion. Before joining Equity Office Properties Trust, Mr. Johnson was a founding Partner, Managing Director and Co-head of U.S. Investments for Lehman Brothers’ first global real estate private equity fund. He is a member of the Urban Land Institute and the Chicago Commonwealth Club. Mr. Johnson earned a master’s degree in business administration from Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management and a bachelor’s degree from Denison University.

Prescient has delivered a compounded annual growth rate of 119% from 2013 through 2017. From 2013 through 2016, the company focused on building multi-unit housing across Colorado, Florida, Nebraska, Missouri and Texas. In 2017, the company has expanded its building footprint into Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, and Oklahoma. Prescient built 3 million square feet of multi-unit housing from 2013 to 2016 and will build two million square feet in 2017 alone.

The company’s current project development pipeline exceeds 10 million square feet, which equals more than $300 million for delivery in 2018 and 2019. Prescient receives requests for proposals of more than 1.5 million square feet per week. As a result, the company recently doubled the size of its Colorado manufacturing facility and brought a second plant online in North Carolina in July 2017.

About Prescient

Digital Thread. The foundation for Prescient’s revolution is a standardized light gauge framing system that utilizes proprietary software applications which create a design and construction platform. Our thread connects projects from the initial architectural design through the finished building. The Prescient Digital thread is based on a model-centric design and planning platform that liberates project stakeholders to plan better and execute better. As a result, a project is no longer a series of isolated steps with familiar breakdowns and gaps. Instead, it becomes an orderly progression through a repeatable flow, connecting developer, designers, suppliers and contractors at every step. This seamless approach means higher productivity, higher quality, fewer last-minute conflicts on site, less waste, shorter schedules, and a better ROI.

Integrated Manufacturing. Prescient uses precision manufacturing technology including robotics, laser cutting systems, and state-of-the-art numerically controlled flexible manufacturing systems to deliver buildings with very tight tolerances, comparable to the automotive industry. Prescient’s digital thread integrates planning & design with manufacturing & installation.

Established in 2012, Prescient is aiming for nothing less than a revolution in the way buildings take shape through new levels of cost efficiency, environmental sustainability, and quality of outcome for all participants. Prescient’s platform ensures buildings perform better, cost less, and take less time to build by employing a digital thread for leading-edge integrated manufacturing.

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