Tag Archives: Information technology

Serent Capital Announces Acquisition of Portfolio Company Motility Software By Reynolds and Reynolds

Serent Capital

July 11, 2022

Motility Software, a leader in end-to-end dealer management software for specialty dealerships and backed by Serent Capital, announced today it has been acquired by The Reynolds and Reynolds Company, a leading provider of automobile dealership software and services. The two companies are joining forces to drive operational excellence at specialty dealerships across the country.

In 2018, Motility entered a partnership with Serent Capital, a growth-focused private equity firm. Motility has experienced record-breaking growth during this time with the addition of 125+ dealers. That growth was bolstered by the acquisition of location-based inventory management solution, Lot Metrix in 2021. In addition, Motility introduced three new products to its portfolio over the course of Serent’s investment: MotilityAnywhere, MotilityPay, and MotilityConnect.

“Serent has been an exceptional partner to us and helped augment our offerings to customers and increase our growth rate,” said Brad Rogers, CEO of Motility Software. He continued, “We are delighted to be joining the Reynolds family. Reynolds’ successful history is undeniable, and this positions us to leverage the advancements they’ve made in automotive and apply them to the specialty dealership market.”

“It has been an honor to have been a partner for Motility and see their remarkable growth over the last few years,” said Kevin Frick, Partner at Serent Capital. “The Motility team has been able to add three new products and increase their reach through a meaningful strategic acquisition. We look forward to seeing their continued growth and success.”

For 150+ years, Reynolds’ has helped dealers transform every aspect of their business and customer experience. Having an already strong presence in the specialty vehicle market with businesses such as AppOne®, Open Dealer Exchange, and Reynolds Document Services, the transaction will create excellent synergies allowing for a dealer and consumer experience not yet seen in the industry.

“Further movement into the specialty vehicle dealership space is a natural extension for our approach to technology and helping retailers succeed,” said Rudolph Nieto, SVP at Reynolds. “Incorporating Motility’s technology will open a new arena to share our auto retailing expertise. I’m delighted to explore the commonalities and ensure we are bringing immense value to dealers in the specialty market.”

With Reynolds’ backing, Motility will build on its unparalleled support and service to better assist its customers. Motility’s support team adopts Net Promoter Score (NPS) to track customer loyalty and satisfaction. In June, the team had a score of 84, which is considered world-class.

Serent Capital invests in growing businesses that have developed compelling solutions that address their customers’ needs. As those businesses grow and evolve, the opportunities and challenges that they face change with them. Principals at Serent Capital have firsthand experience at capturing those opportunities and navigating these difficulties through their experiences as CEOs, strategic advisors, and board members to successful growing businesses. By bringing its expertise and capital to bear, Serent seeks to help growing businesses thrive. Learn more about our portfolio companies.

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Maxicom IT Distribution and Aliter Networks are joining forces and will continue as “Circular IT Group”

Waterland

Maxicom IT Distribution and Aliter Networks are joining forces and will continue as “Circular IT Group” (www.circularITgroup.com). The group offers customers a sustainable solution for their IT needs, through a refurbished hardware proposition combined with additional services. Supported by investor Waterland, the group has the ambition to grow to over €300 million in revenue in the circular IT domain in the coming years, where growth will be accelerated by an acquisition strategy.

Contributing to a sustainable IT value chain
The group offers customers a circular and sustainable solution to their IT needs, through a refurbished hardware proposition combined with additional services. The vast majority of CO2 emissions from IT equipment are related to the raw material extraction and production phase. By using IT equipment for a longer period of time, the annual CO2 emissions related to the production phase of new equipment decreases and the use of Critical Raw Materials decreases. Circular IT Group offers a wide range of refurbished IT equipment as a sustainable solution for IT needs and thus contributes to making the IT value chain more sustainable.

Complete product range for broad customer portfolio
The group offers a wide range of circular IT solutions: IT Asset Disposition (ITAD), de-installation of old equipment, secure data removal, testing and repairs, distribution and logistics, and remarketing, rental and sale of refurbished equipment. These solutions are offered for the complete IT hardware segment, ranging from network equipment, servers and storage devices, to desktops, laptops and cell phones. With this offering, the group serves more than 10,000 customers worldwide, from business end-users, to service providers and consumers. The group has its headquarters in Zoetermeer, with additional locations in Almere and Singapore. The group employs a total of 110 FTE.

Jean-Pierre Verhoeven, interim-CEO Circular IT Group: “We have been active in this market for more than 20 years, but have seen a clear acceleration in growth in recent years due to companies’ increasing focus on the sustainability aspect of their IT strategy. Together with Aliter Networks and Waterland, we want to offer customers a complete range of products and services related to sustainable IT solutions.”

Zimin Chen, Sales Director Aliter Networks: “In recent years, we have worked hard to properly serve our international customers in the field of sustainable network solutions. In cooperation with Maxicom and Waterland, we are now extending our expertise across the product spectrum in order to further broaden and strengthen our services.”

Tomas Simons, Partner Waterland: “Reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and circularity of materials are major challenges for the world, for which circular IT offers important solutions. We therefore expect substantial growth from this young sector as sustainability becomes more prominent in corporate and government IT investments. With Waterland’s growth expertise, we can make a meaningful contribution to a better world and a stronger company through this investment.”

About Maxicom IT Distribution
Maxicom IT Distribution is a circular IT hardware supplier, based in Zoetermeer, and specialized in refurbishment, recycling, IT Asset Disposition, data wiping, de-commissioning of old infrastructure and sales of IT hardware. Maxicom was founded in 1998 and serves the European market with three different brands. Maxicom IT Distribution (www.maxicom-it.eu) is the brand that focuses on the European dealer channel. With Cirres (www.cirres.com) they serve business customers in the Benelux. Mr At (www.mr-at.nl) is the consumer brand, providing consumers with high quality refurbished IT hardware for 24 years. All brands focus on 4 customer promises: competitive prices, high quality, directly availability from stock and environmentally friendly.

About Aliter Networks
Aliter Networks (www.aliternetworks.com) is B-corp certified company and our purpose to make a difference with IT: for people, planet and profit. Our core focus is delivering premium refurbished quality for data center IT infrastructure of Cisco, Juniper, HP and Dell.
Since 2009 Aliter has been serving telecom companies, enterprises and resellers in Europe and Asia-Pacific. From the offices in Almere, the Netherlands and Singapore, with a diverse team of 42 FTE and 21 nationalities we work towards the goal of driving sustainability within the IT department of our clients.

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Ardian to support EMH Partners’ majority acquisition of Cleverbridge with new unitranche financing

Ardian

Ardian, a world leading private investment house, today announces that it has arranged a new unitranche financing to support the majority acquisition of Cleverbridge by EMH Partners, alongside the management team and founders. The financing arranged by Ardian’s Private Debt team also includes an additional committed debt facility to further support Cleverbridge’s global expansion plans.

Headquartered in Cologne and Chicago and founded in 2005, Cleverbridge provides solutions that enable clients to grow their revenue without adding headcount. Driving subscription-renewals through personalized automation for B2B & B2C clients in SaaS and digital goods; Cleverbridge provides an easy-to-integrate, cloud-based and AI/ML driven engine that simplifies client-retention and market expansion while providing best-in-class customer experience in 180 global markets.

These capabilities are coupled to proven global tax, compliance and payment-solutions that help Cleverbridge clients improve cost efficiency, client-retention and grow revenue without adding headcount.

“We are delighted to be supporting the management team and EMH Partners who have a strong track record in expanding and scaling mid-sized companies in the digital space. Cleverbridge leverages its unique proposition to drive clients’ growth in the attractive software and digital goods market and is well-positioned for continued expansion. The Private Debt team is very pleased to be the company’s financing partner and to support Cleverbridge’s growth ambitions.” Lukas Stepanek, Managing Director in the Ardian Private Debt team

“Cleverbridge addresses a huge market opportunity as the volume of subscription and software-as-a-service solutions sold globally continues to increase. With Ardian’s bespoke and flexible financing solution we look forward to supporting the company and its management team during their next phase of expansion.” Dominik Schwarz, Partner at EMH Partners

ABOUT CLEVERBRIDGE

Cleverbridge provides solutions that enable clients to grow their revenue without adding headcount. With a full suite of revenue tools such as renewal automation and payment, tax and compliance solutions, Cleverbridge helps B2B & B2C enterprises go-to-market in 180 markets, processing an average of 1.5m transactions per month.

www.grow.cleverbridge.com

ABOUT EMH PARTNERS

EMH Partners is an owner-led investment firm by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs. As a next-generation private equity company and one of the leading investors in the DACH region, EMH Partners supports the growth of Mittelstand companies with capital, digitalization and expansion expertise. EMH Partners invests in market leading, owner-managed companies to accompany them in partnership during the next growth phase. Today, EMH Partners manages more than €1 billion of committed capital.

www.emh.com

ABOUT ARDIAN

Ardian is a world leading private investment house, managing or advising $130bn of assets on behalf of more than 1,300 clients globally. Our broad expertise, spanning Private Equity, Real Assets and Credit, enables us to offer a wide range of investment opportunities and respond flexibly to our clients’ differing needs. Through Ardian Customized Solutions we create bespoke portfolios that allow institutional clients to specify the precise mix of assets they require and to gain access to funds managed by leading third-party sponsors. We also provide a specialist service for private clients through Ardian Private Wealth Solutions. Ardian is majority-owned by its employees and places great emphasis on developing its people and fostering a collaborative culture based on collective intelligence. Our 900+ employees, spread across 15 offices in Europe, the Americas and Asia, are strongly committed to the principles of Responsible Investment and are determined to make finance a force for good in society. Our goal is to deliver excellent investment performance combined with high ethical standards and social responsibility.
At Ardian we invest all of ourselves in building companies that last.

www.ardian.com

Media Contact

ARDIAN

HEADLAND

ardian@headlandconsultancy.co.uk

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Snowplow, the World’s Leader in Data Creation for AI and BI, Closes $40M in Series B Funding

Atlantic Bridge

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Snowplow, the World's Leader in Data Creation for AI and BI, Closes $40M in Series B Funding

LONDON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Snowplow, the world’s leader in Data Creation, today announced $40 million in Series B funding led by global venture capital firm, NEA, whose prior investments include Databricks, Cloudflare, and DataRobot, and continued support from existing Snowplow investors, Atlantic Bridge, and MMC. To date, funding raised totals $55 million. The new infusion of capital will allow Snowplow to grow its team, accelerate support for an ever-increasing set of data types, and scale internationally.

Snowplow announces $40 million in Series B funding to enable any company to create behavioral data to power data intensive applications at scale. @NEA led the round with continued support from @atlanticbridgev.

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Today, over 10,000 companies including Strava and Software.com use Snowplow to create data to power transformative AI and advanced analytics directly from their data warehouse, lake or steam in real-time. With Snowplow, data teams have access to rich behavioral data that is created, modeled, and fit for the data application they are building, allowing them to focus on driving value rather than spending time finding, cleansing, and preparing data for analysis.

As companies adopt AI and ML in more parts of their business, there is an increasing need for high quality, well structured, predictive, and well-understood data to power those algorithms. Traditional approaches, where companies repurpose existing data, have proved expensive and brittle. Snowplow was founded to address this challenge with a unique approach: enabling organizations to deliberately create better data for AI and advanced analytics, driving improved AI performance, faster time to value, and better compliance.

“Snowplow was built to solve the need for predictive, behavioral data to drive decisions, insights in a privacy conscious and scalable way,” said Snowplow CEO and Co-Founder, Alex Dean. “Snowplow places the power of behavioral data into the hands of the teams that need it most, directly into their existing data infrastructure.”

Snowplow uniquely creates data directly into a customer’s Data Warehouse or Lakehouse combining with data from external systems to create a Universal Data Language. This Universal Data Language is specific to each business, and allows for dramatically reduced time spent in data preparation. Significantly improving performance for Machine Learning and Analytics use cases. All of this is brought together as part of Snowplow’s Behavioral Data Platform.

Common use cases for Snowplow include:

Advanced Analytics for modeling customers behavioral data across multiple points of engagement from web, mobile, point of sale, sales data, and customer support to create a dataset that provides companies with the most accurate view of customer behavior and marketing attribution. Snowplow’s approach to pipeline deployment, first-party tracking, and anonymous tracking provides significant advantages over traditional analytics tools such as Google Analytics.

Composable CDP and Customer 360 – Behavioral data creation is the underlying foundation of the Composable CDP, providing a true single customer view and a platform to power personalization at scale. Compared to off-the-shelf CDPs, composable CDPs are built on a business’s single source of truth, the warehouse or lake and built with best-in-class data tooling.

AI/ML Model Creation becomes more efficient by eliminating data wrangling. Snowplow delivers real-time, AI-ready data to your warehouse or lake, ready to train data models. With every data point validated up front against a user-defined schema, there is full assurance that data is in a highly expected format at a consistent level of granularity to create accurate model predictions.

Software.com sought a way to describe how developers work together and then apply this to enable great developer efficiency. Software.com leverages Snowplow for its ability to track event data from multiple sources across its platform and support systems and deliver it all in a single, consolidated format. All data entering the warehouse has been validated and adheres to a unified format. Using Snowplow, Software.com’s data stack now passes data from collection to analysis in roughly 20 seconds—hours ahead of the closest competition. Thanks to this, Software.com’s user base has grown 250%.

Other Noteworthy Snowplow customers and adopters include:

  • Charlotte Tilbury
  • CNN
  • Datadog
  • MassMutual
  • GitLab
  • Capital One
  • Autodesk
  • Axel Springer

“AI is one of the largest opportunities in technology, but in order to maximize the return on AI and advanced analytics initiatives, organizations need better data that they have full control over,” said Tony Florence, Managing General Partner, Technology, NEA. “Snowplow is pioneering the Data Creation category with a developer-first platform that allows any company to create and consume AI-ready data as if they were Amazon or Netflix.”

Alex Sharata, Senior Associate, NEA added: “We were impressed by Snowplow’s traction with the open source community as well as the company’s ability to deliver value to large enterprise customers, such as Autotrader, Flickr, Strava, and Zenefits, among others. We’re thrilled to partner with Alex Dean, Yali Sassoon, and the Snowplow team as they continue to create and operationalize data at scale for teams across the globe.”

Snowplow’s pioneering technology has led to awards, winning ‘Best Attribution Solution’ at The Drum Awards for Digital Advertising 2022, and ‘Data Tech Deployment of the Year’ at the Data Breakthrough Awards 2022.

About Snowplow

Snowplow generates, enhances and models high-quality, granular Behavioral Data, ready for use in AI, ML, and Advanced Analytics applications. When integrated with other tools from the modern data stack, Snowplow can power a wide variety of advanced data applications, allowing organizations to drive significant business value with behavioral data. Data applications built on top of Snowplow include composable CDPs, first-party digital analytics and ML-powered churn reduction for subscription businesses. For more information on Snowplow, follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram, or visit us on GitHub.

About NEA

New Enterprise Associates, Inc. (NEA) is a global venture capital firm focused on helping entrepreneurs build transformational businesses across multiple stages, sectors and geographies. With nearly $24 billion in cumulative committed capital since the firm’s founding in 1977, NEA invests in technology and healthcare companies at all stages in a company’s lifecycle, from seed stage through IPO. The firm’s track record of investing includes more than 260 portfolio company IPOs and more than 430 mergers and acquisitions. www.nea.com

Contacts

Yasmin Zeitoun
Marketing Strategy Lead
Snowplow Analytics
yasmin@snowplowanalytics.com

Atlantic Bridge is a Global Growth Equity Technology Firm with over €1 billion of assets under management across seven Funds, investing in technology companies in Europe and the US. We have offices and staff based in Palo Alto, London, Dublin, Munich and Paris.

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TechInsights acquires Strategy Analytics

Oakley

TechInsights, an Oakley Capital (‘Oakley’) and CVC Growth Partners portfolio company, is pleased to announce that it has acquired Strategy Analytics, a leading supplier of syndicated research across the global consumer technology sector.

TechInsights image

Headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, with a significant presence in Europe, Strategy Analytics supplies syndicated research across the global consumer technology sector, providing the deepest wireless and automotive coverage in the market.

Icons8 Globe

Business provides syndicated research across global consumer tech sector

Icons8 Air Shaft

Acquisition strengthens content offering to strategically important sectors including auto

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Highly complementary content and customer base with opportunity to cross sell

The team at Strategy Analytics is excited to be joining forces with TechInsights. The content we will create together and deliver through a single platform will further expand our ability to meet client needs, while our highly complementary customer base provides the opportunity to cross and upsell.

Harvey Cohen

President — Strategy Analytics

Advanced technology and market analysis

TechInsights is widely recognised as the world’s authoritative information services platform for the global microelectronics sector, built from a core competency of heavily differentiated reverse engineering creating advanced technology and market analysis. TechInsights sells syndicated content to the world’s largest companies, underpinning investment in microchip development and innovation. Oakley Fund IV invested in TechInsights in 2021 alongside CVC Funds to support the company’s growth strategy through client and content acquisition, supplemented by strategic M&A.

Highly complementary content and customers

TechInsights and Strategy Analytics enjoy highly complementary content and customers as well as high proportions of recurring revenues. Integrating Strategy Analytics’ content into TechInsights’ platform will strengthen the business’s market position as the go-to information provider for the semiconductor sector, while also providing cross selling opportunities.

Adding Strategy Analytics will also enable TechInsights to further access strategically important industries including the auto sector, where carmakers are increasingly designing their own chips in the face of continuing supply chain disruption and as they strive to achieve a competitive advantage versus peers.

Quote Gavin Carter

We are rapidly increasing the content available on the TechInsights Platform, further strengthening our position as the most authoritative information provider to participants in the semiconductor sector. The more analysis, data and information we can provide the more informed our content becomes. I am delighted that Strategy Analytics content will now expand our Platform further, creating even more value for our customers under one single offering while extending access for TechInsights to important new sectors such as auto.

Gavin Carter

CEO — TechInsights

Quote Peter Dubens

We see considerable opportunity for TechInsights to expand into new verticals as more companies seek actionable insights on the fast-growing semiconductor industry. Adding Strategy Analytics also demonstrates Oakley’s ability to help entrepreneurial businesses grow through M&A and to date we have helped our portfolio companies complete over 100 bolt-on acquisitions.

Peter Dubens

Managing Partner & Co-Founder — Oakley Capital

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Nordstjernan to invest in Mentimeter AB, a leading player in audience engagement

Nordstjernan

Nordstjernan Growth is investing in Mentimeter, a rapidly-growing SaaS company in the field of audience engagement. Mentimeter offers a solution to build enthusiasm in meetings and engage participants and audiences. Mentimeter’s platform engages people globally; to date, over 200 million individuals have used the product.

 

Nordstjernan will be investing SEK 150 million in Mentimeter. Creades is also coming in as a new investor in the company, and Alfvén and Didrikson – an existing owner – will be investing additional capital.

 

“It is a sign of strength that Nordstjernan Growth – a player with a long-term perspective – has chosen to invest in Mentimeter, and I am looking forward to continuing to build the company together with them,” says Johnny Warström, CEO and founder of Mentimeter.

 

“We are investing in Mentimeter with the ambition of supporting the company in its continued development. We are impressed by what Johnny Warström, Niklas Ingvar and the team have achieved, and we look forward to supporting the company over the long term,” says Nordstjernan’s CEO Peter Hofvenstam.

 

The investment is being made within Nordstjernan’s growth initiative, Nordstjernan Growth, and is the fourth holding in the Growth portfolio.

 

Peter Hofvenstam

President and CEO

Nordstjernan AB

 

 

Questions will be answered by:

 

Peter Hofvenstam, CEO, Nordstjernan

E-mail: peter.hofvenstam@nordstjernan.se

 

Stefan Stern, Head of Communications, Nordstjernan

Mobile: +46 70 636 74 17

E-mail: stefan.stern@nordstjernan.se

 

 

Nordstjernan is a family-controlled investment company whose business concept is to be an active owner that creates long-term value growth. More information about Nordstjernan can be found on www.nordstjernan.se.

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Adelis acquires IT company netIP

Adelis Equity
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The Danish IT company netIP A/S (”netIP”) partners with Adelis Equity Partners (“Adelis”) to support the company’s next growth phase.

netIP, which is a leading and independent one-stop-shop IT provider, has a special focus on IT outsourcing, IT infrastructure, IT security, SharePoint and IT consulting services for Danish businesses. In the past five years, the number of employees has doubled to the current 165 employees based in seven departments in Thisted, Holstebro, Herning, Aalborg, Aarhus, Viborg and Herlev.

“In the past year, netIP has completed a successful turnaround after an unusual financial year of 2020/2021, where Covid-19 made it difficult to make things work together, which i.a. resulted in layoffs of 18 employees. Due to structural changes and the employees’ huge work effort, the management of netIP expects to be able to present an adjusted operating profit of approximately DKK 36 million in the financial year 2021/2022, which ends on 30 June 2022. This  is a significant improvement compared to the previous year”, says Martin Welna at Adelis Equity.

CEO and main shareholder, Martin Kjølhede, has been part of the company since 2000, and in connection with the divestment he wishes to resign from the management to concentrate on the strategic development of the company. Therefore, he continues as a board member and leaves the management to the three current directors, comprising CCO Brian Vesterbæk, CFO Birgitte Lukassen and COO Joakim Halvorsen.

“I am extremely proud on behalf of netIP of what we have created and accomplished together. The time is right to bring a responsible private equity fund such as Adelis on board, which can help build on the company’s strengths by adding competence and experience. Personally, it has been important for me to sell to an investor who wants to preserve and support the existing culture and values. netIP is first and foremost about people, because they are the ones who create the culture, the company and the results”, explains CEO Martin Kjølhede.

Adelis also joins the Board of Directors to support the strategy of growth and expansion of the IT business through strong customer relationships and high employee satisfaction.

“We see great potential in the way in which netIP meets customers at eye level and creates an attractive workplace with motivated and loyal employees. We look forward to building on the company’s strengths and culture. Therefore, neither employees nor customers will experience changes associated with the sale, but they can however expect netIP to become an even stronger organization, ”says Martin Welna at Adelis.

The agreement must now be approved by the relevant authorities before the deal can be considered final.

The transaction price for netIP is approx. DKK 375 million.

For further information:

Martin Welna, Adelis Equity Partners, martin.welna@adelisequity.com, +45 21 99 67 57

Martin Kjølhede, netIP, mkj@netIP.dk, +45 82 19 44 01

About netIP

NetIP is an independent one-stop-shop IT provider of consulting, advisory, security and outsourcing services as well as solutions within infrastructure and SharePoint for Danish businesses. The company consists of 165 people in local branches in Thisted, Holstebro, Herning, Aalborg, Aarhus, Viborg and Herlev. Read more at netip.dk.

About Adelis Equity Partners

Adelis is a growth partner for well-positioned, Nordic companies. Adelis partners with management and/or owners to build businesses in growth segments and with strong market positions. Since raising its first fund in 2013, Adelis has been one of the most active investors in the Nordic middle-market, making 33 platform investments and more than 150 add-on acquisitions. Adelis today manages approximately €2 billion in capital. For more information, please visit www.adelisequity.com

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Global fintech SumUp raises €590 million and celebrates 10 years of supporting small merchants

BainCapital

LONDON, June 22, 2022- SumUp (www.sumup.co.uk), the financial partner for over 4 million small businesses worldwide, has raised a €590 million funding round that gives the company an enterprise value of €8 billion following a decade of rapid growth and global expansion. The round was led by Bain Capital Tech Opportunities, with participation from funds managed by BlackRock, btov Partners, Centerbridge, Crestline, Fin Capital, and Sentinel Dome Partners, among others. This latest round is a combination of debt and equity and brings SumUp’s total capital raised to €1.5 billion.

SumUp was founded in 2012 to help small merchants start, run and grow their business through a fair, easy, and reliable payment solution. Today, its financial services Super App provides merchants with a free business account and card, an online store, and an invoicing solution, as well as in-person and remote payments seamlessly integrated with SumUp’s proprietary card terminals and point-of-sale registers. More than 4 million businesses ‒ from taxi drivers and coffee shop owners to large sports stadiums ‒ trust SumUp to deliver when it matters.

SumUp’s team of over 3,000 people supports merchants in 35 countries worldwide, with Peru (launched in June 2022) being the company’s most recent new market. In recent years, SumUp has also expanded into point-of-sale solutions, and with the acquisitions of Goodtill, Tiller, and Fivestars, the company is rapidly expanding its footprint within the restaurant and retail sectors.

Marc-Alexander Christ, SumUp co-founder and CFO, said of the round: “SumUp has received consistent support from the global investment community in our mission to help small merchants succeed. We stand by our merchants whatever the circumstance ‒ whether that be COVID or macroeconomic uncertainty. Our ability to organically grow 60+% through the challenges of recent years shows that we are there for merchants when they need support most. I am very proud of the team for completing a successful financing round in the current market with marquee investors – it’s indicative of our strength, execution, and potential. The funds we’ve raised will enable us to continue to build out our product ecosystem, expand into new markets, pursue value-adding acquisitions, and continue leveling the playing field for small merchants at a global scale.”

Darren Abrahamson, a Managing Director at Bain Capital Tech Opportunities, added: “SumUp has continually evolved to empower a growing and diverse field of small businesses with payment solutions and tools to efficiently connect with their everyday consumers. SumUp’s leadership team have led the company to sustained and accelerated growth through expansion to more than 30 countries where they have had a direct and positive impact on the small business ecosystem. We’re proud to contribute our deep fintech and payments experience to aid SumUp’s remarkable ability to push the boundaries and lead an incredibly competitive industry.”

Bain Capital has deep global investment experience across the payments and e-commerce sectors, having invested in and added value to a wide-range of companies at all stages of their growth cycle.

Goldman Sachs International acted as exclusive placement agent for SumUp. Weil, Gotshal & Manges acted as legal adviser to SumUp on the financing.

About SumUp
SumUp is a leading global financial technology company driven by the purpose of leveling the playing field for small businesses. Founded in 2012, SumUp is the financial partner for more than 4 million small merchants in over 35 markets worldwide, helping them start, run and grow their business. Through its Super App, SumUp provides merchants with a free business account and card, an online store, and an invoicing solution – as well as in-person and remote payments seamlessly integrated with SumUp’s card terminals and point-of-sale registers. SumUp is committed to leveraging its success to make the world a better place and has pledged to donate 1% of its revenue to support  environmental, educational and entrepreneurial causes. For more information, please visit sumup.co.uk.

About Bain Capital Tech Opportunities
Bain Capital Tech Opportunities (https://www.baincapitaltechopportunities.com/) aims to help growing technology companies reach their full potential. We focus on companies in large, growing end markets with innovative or disruptive technology where we believe we can support transformational growth. Our dedicated, tenured team has deep experience supporting growing technology businesses—bringing together differentiated backgrounds in private and public equity investing as well as technology operating roles. We invest behind fundamental long-term tailwinds as technology penetrates across industries,     creating a large and growing number of investment opportunities. Bain Capital Tech Opportunities focuses on five priority sub-verticals: Application Software, Infrastructure & Security, Fintech & Payments, Healthcare IT and Internet & Digital Media.

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EQT Private Equity to sell Facile.it, Italy’s largest online price comparison platform, to Silver Lake

eqt
  • EQT Private Equity and Oakley to sell Facile.it, Italy’s leading online destination for consumers to compare prices and save money on key areas of household spending, to Silver Lake
  • Under EQT Private Equity’s tenure, Facile.it has continued to pioneer the Online Price Comparison market in Italy and further established its position as clear leader across multiple verticals, strengthening its brand, technology capabilities, and omnichannel presence
  • Today, Facile.it reaches a base of over four million unique monthly users via an end-to-end seamless experience across its website, 39 stores, and over three thousand agents, and has grown its EBITDA by more than 20 percent on average over the last four years

EQT is pleased to announce that the EQT VIII fund (“EQT Private Equity”) and Oakley have agreed to sell Facile.it (“Facile” or “the “Company”), Italy’s largest online price comparison platform, to Silver Lake.

Founded in 2008 and headquartered in Milan, Facile.it is Italy’s leading destination for consumers to compare prices for motor insurances, utilities, financial products, and much more, helping users save time and money, and making their everyday life easier.

During EQT Private Equity’s ownership, Facile.it has continued to pioneer the Online Price Comparison market in Italy, developing innovative products that save its users hundreds of millions of euros every year. Over time, Facile.it has expanded its diversified product offering and unique omnichannel distribution proposition, which underpin its long-term growth trajectory and allow it to benefit from the continued market digitalization and e-commerce penetration.

EQT Private Equity has invested significantly in Facile, future-proofing its technology architecture, expanding its management team, and developing unique omnichannel distribution capabilities, while continuing to reinforce its brand. In 2021, the Company reached EUR 140 million revenues and is today well-positioned for its next phase of growth.

Dominik Stein, Partner within EQT Private Equity’s Advisory Team, said, “Facile.it is a great example of how EQT can help unlock a company’s full potential by combining our local-with-locals approach and deep sector expertise, with our long experience from developing tech companies. EQT is proud of having been a part of Facile’s remarkable growth trajectory and development. We would like to thank the whole management team for the trusted partnership over the past four years. We would also like to thank our co-investor Oakley Capital, the Advisory Committee members and all employees for their daily commitment in making Facile.it the unique company it is today.”

Christian Lucas, Co-Head of Silver Lake EMEA, said, “Facile is an exceptional business with a differentiated and powerful value proposition for customers, channel partners and financial service providers. We are truly impressed by what Tobias and the rest of the team have built over the past years. The company is now Italy’s leading online destination for consumers to compare prices with a market-leading tech platform and unique omnichannel capabilities across its agent networks and stores. Investing in high-growth and pioneering business models with differentiated technology capabilities is at the core of our mission. We look forward to partnering with Tobias and the rest of the management team to significantly invest in the business and drive further growth and value creation over the coming years by contributing our experience from investments in multiple similar businesses across Europe.”

Tobias Stuber, CEO of Facile.it, said “On behalf of the Facile.it management team and all employees, I would like to thank EQT and Oakley for the successful, collaborative, and highly productive partnership over the past four years on our journey towards capitalizing further on our position as a landmark destination for Italy’s household spending. Thanks to their support, we are in an even better position today for the next phase of our growth with our new partner Silver Lake.”

The transaction is subject to customary conditions and approvals and is expected to close in Q3, 2022.

Goldman Sachs acted as the exclusive financial advisor, Latham & Watkins as legal advisor to EQT.

Contact
EQT Press Office, press@eqtpartners.com, +46 8 506 55 334

About EQT
EQT is a purpose-driven global investment organization with EUR 77 billion in assets under management across 36 active funds. EQT funds have portfolio companies in Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Americas with total sales of approximately EUR 29 billion and more than 280,000 employees. EQT works with portfolio companies to achieve sustainable growth, operational excellence and market leadership.

More info: www.eqtgroup.com
Follow EQT on LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram

About Oakley Capital
Founded in 2002, Oakley Capital is a pan-European private equity firm backing ambitious growth companies across three core sectors – Technology, Consumer and Education. Oakley is able to deliver differentiated investment opportunities and superior returns by leveraging its entrepreneurial mindset and deep sector expertise. The Oakley team works closely with a unique network of entrepreneurs and successful management teams to help source primary, proprietary opportunities and gain valuable insights into the businesses in which it invests. Its ability to overcome complexity, and a flexible approach to value creation, allows Oakley to support its portfolio companies to achieve sustainable growth.

More info: www.oakleycapital.com

About Facile.it

Facile.it is the leading Italian Online Price Comparison platform, helping over 4 million customers every month to compare prices on key areas of their household spending, providing access to a wide product offering, helping them save time and money. The Company in 2021 generated approximately EUR 140 million in revenue

More info: www.facile.it

About Silver Lake
Silver Lake is a global technology investment firm, with more than $88 billion in combined assets under management and committed capital and a team of professionals based in North America, Europe and Asia. Silver Lake’s portfolio companies collectively generate nearly $254 billion of revenue annually and employ approximately 557,000 people globally.

More info: www.silverlake.com

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Ardian announces the sale of its stake in Trustteam to Rivean Capital

Ardian

Ardian, a world leading private investment house, announces today it has signed an agreement with Rivean Capital to sell its majority stake in Trustteam, a leading IT managed services provider headquartered in Kortrijk, Belgium.

Founded in 2002 by Stijn Vandeputte, Trustteam serves a broad base of c.6,500 active customers in Belgium and France with a one-stop-shop offering covering the full spectrum of IT services and equipment, cloud, connectivity, cybersecurity and software solutions. Trustteam assists SME clients who typically have limited internal IT skills and expertise and therefore prefer a trustworthy and preferred partner that can offer full unburdening from an IT perspective. The company benefits from long-term, secular growth fueled by the increasing digitization of the economy and businesses, the transition from on-premise hardware into the cloud, growing IT complexity, and increased IT outsourcing.

Since Ardian’s acquisition of a majority stake in 2018, Trustteam has rapidly grown both through solid organic growth and targeted M&A. Trustteam and its management, with the backing from Ardian, have successfully completed 6 add-ons in France and Belgium, with France now representing more than 30% of the group’s revenues.

” Over the last years, we have significantly accelerated our development and have further professionalized the group, tripling the revenues of the company. We would like to express our gratitude to the Ardian Expansion team for their continuous support and guidance over the past years. We look forward to starting a new chapter with our partner Rivean Capital who have demonstrated an outstanding understanding of our business and full compatibility with our culture.” Stijn Vandeputte, Founder & CEO of Trustteam

“Since our entry to the capital of Trustteam, our objective has been to accompany the Group in its development in Belgium and France through an active buy-and-build strategy. Alongside the seasoned management team, we have supported their objectives to make Trustteam a leading player in IT services. We would like to thank all teams and are happy to pass the baton to a quality partner like Rivean Capital.” Arnaud Dufer, Managing Director and Head of France and Belgium in the Ardian Expansion team

“From the outset, we have been impressed with Trustteam’s track record of consistent organic growth, its value-creative buy-and build strategy and its entrepreneurial management team, creating the leading managed service provider for SMEs in Belgium and Northern France. In an increasingly complex IT environment, Trustteam offers an attractive proposition to fully unburden their SME customers. We are delighted to be partnering with Pieter, Stijn and the rest of the management team to further their growth ambitions, both organically and through strategic acquisitions.” Peter Hujoel, Partner at Rivean

“This transaction is another milestone for Rivean in Belgium and fits perfectly with our ‘local-for-local’ strategy to partner with ambitious and entrepreneurial management teams regarding the internationalization of their business.” Nicolas Linkens, Senior Partner at Rivean

LIST OF PARTICIPANTS

  • Ardian Expansion

    • Arnaud Dufer, Maxime Séquier, Romain Gautron, Mathieu Lebrun
    • Legal advisor: Linklaters (Arnaud Coibion, Victor Burki)

  • Rivean Capital

    • Nicolas Linkens, Peter Hujoel, Rogier Corthout, Baptiste Roussel
    • Legal advisor: Allen & Overy (Frederiek Adams)

ABOUT TRUSTTEAM

Trustteam is a provider of IT managed services provider, specializing in cloud solutions, hardware and networks, software, VoIP and support. Trustteam has two ISO 27001 certified data centers which allow it to meet the most stringent information security requirements. The company was established in 2002 and has offices in Belgium (Kortrijk, Wavre, Heusden-Zolder, Antwerp and Nazareth), France (Colmar and Nancy) and Romania (Iași). With now nearly 6,500 customers, Trustteam is a major player in the IT services market in Belgium and France.

trustteam.be

ABOUT ARDIAN

Ardian is a world leading private investment house, managing or advising $130bn of assets on behalf of more than 1,300 clients globally. Our broad expertise, spanning Private Equity, Real Assets and Credit, enables us to offer a wide range of investment opportunities and respond flexibly to our clients’ differing needs. Through Ardian Customized Solutions we create bespoke portfolios that allow institutional clients to specify the precise mix of assets they require and to gain access to funds managed by leading third-party sponsors. We also provide a specialist service for private clients through Ardian Private Wealth Solutions. Ardian is majority-owned by its employees and places great emphasis on developing its people and fostering a collaborative culture based on collective intelligence. Our 900+ employees, spread across 15 offices in Europe, the Americas and Asia, are strongly committed to the principles of Responsible Investment and are determined to make finance a force for good in society. Our goal is to deliver excellent investment performance combined with high ethical standards and social responsibility.
At Ardian we invest all of ourselves in building companies that last.

ardian.com

ABOUT RIVEAN CAPITAL

Rivean Capital (“Rivean”) is a leading European private equity investor in mid-market transactions with operations in the DACH region, Benelux and Italy. Rivean manages funds in excess of €3bn and has offices in Utrecht, Brussels, Frankfurt, Zurich and Milan.
Since its inception in 1982, Rivean has supported more than 250 companies in realizing their growth ambitions. Other recent investments include MBK Fincom, Init, TAS, EDCO and To-Increase.

riveancapital.com

Media Contacts

TRUSTTEAM

Pieter Spiesschaert

Pieter.spiesschaert@trustteam.be  

ARDIAN

HEADLAND

ardian@headlandconsultancy.com  

RIVEAN CAPITAL

Maikel Wieland

m.wieland@riveancapital.com

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