Milan, 7th July 2022 – KYIP Capital announces its entry into higher education platform K-Now through a capital increase of approximately €7 million, becoming its first shareholder. The resources will be used by K-Now to acquire 90 percent of Saint Louis College of Music and finance the Group's strong growth. The acquisition of Saint Louis joins 3 other universities already in the platform's portfolio, located between Milan and Rome, operating in the Fine Arts and Design segments. K-Now reported revenues of approximately €14 million in 2022.

The total number of students at the four schools is now around 2,600, and the goal of the 2022-2025 three-year plan is to increase the number of enrolled students to about 4,000. In anticipation of this growth, there are plans to open 2 additional new campuses (one in Rome and one in Milan) totaling about 6,000sqm. K-Now, with the support of KYIP Capital, is working on finalizing 3 more acquisitions also in the Education sector.

"In recent years," comments Luciano Hassan, President of KYIP Capital, "we have built deep experience in the world of higher education; a fascinating sector in terms of content but also because of the positive impact it can have on the social fabric, as well as historically double-digit growth rates. However, we are convinced that today to grow further we must also leverage innovation and digital transformation of processes. The entry into K-Now and the creation of a significantly sized "Education Hub" has therefore become the strategic element for us to operate a digitization of the entire business model. Through, in fact, the integration in the holding company of back-office services and digital marketing activities, we are convinced that we can improve synergies and better respond to the constantly evolving needs of the new generations. At the same time, however, maintaining outwardly the specific identities of the individual schools, the real added value for students."

The Saint Louis School of Music is the first private Institution of High Artistic Musical Education in Italy authorized by the MUR to grant Level I and II academic degrees, in Jazz, Pop Music, Electronic Music, Direction, Sound Technician and Composition, the same degrees awarded by Italian Conservatories, therefore equivalent to Level I and II degrees. The School has more than 1,300 students enrolling each year, including from abroad, and boasts a stable faculty of 120 nationally renowned teachers, directed since 1998 by Maestro Stefano Mastruzzi, who will remain an employee while maintaining the position of Managing Director. Saint Louis has 4 locations in the heart of Rome's Rione Monti district and is equipped with 50 multi-purpose classrooms, 5 recording studios for teaching and recording production.

In addition to Saint Louis College of Music, the K-Now group also includes: Rome University of Fine Arts (RUFA), one of the leading private universities offering first and second level academic courses in the World of Fine Arts; Scuola Politecnica di Design (SPD), which offers postgraduate courses in Design, particularly Car and Food Design; and finally Ferrari Fashion School, a postgraduate academy related to the world of fashion. The last two schools are based in Milan.

Michele Fontana Sabatini, Business Partner of KYIP, says, "We are delighted to welcome Saint Louis into the K-Now group and look forward to helping Stefano Mastruzzi and his team on their growth path. With this acquisition, K-Now has reached a significant dimension in the world of Creative Arts Education, and therefore we expect that important synergies can soon arise both from the point of view of educational programs and commercial offerings," he adds. "Our students are usually between 18 and 23 years old. So they are digital natives, while their universities still speak the analog language: so there is a big digital gap between the tools they need and those that are being offered by institutions today. 86% of kids that age don't use email but only instant messaging, but universities still send communications mainly by email. We have the ambition of wanting to reduce this gap by integrating private education and technology."

Stefano Mastruzzi: "Saint Louis's ambitious goals and the challenges these will entail require an extraordinary commitment in terms of resources, skills, and vision, characteristics that only a structured group with a strong presence in higher education in art and music such as K-now will be able to undertake, for the benefit of thousands of students for job placement, in order to ensure access to the world of work for newly graduated talents, for the development of multimedia platforms that make the educational experience totalizing, performant and up-to-date and to broaden the attractiveness to students from all over the world, with the aim of creating an artistically rich and stimulating, multi-ethnic environment where international cultures and artistic currents converge to "con-fuse" in innovative musical languages.”