Waterland sells Combell to Hg

Following the deal, Hg will hold a 55% stake in the business, while Combell management will own a 45% stake.

Hg invested via its eighth flagship fund, which typically invests £100-250m in companies with enterprise values of £100-500m, and HgCapital Trust, which invested £22.1m in the deal.

The company will continue to pursue an international acquisitive growth strategy under its new owners, having made 17 bolt-ons during Waterland's holding period. Most recently, it acquired Denmark-based SmartWeb in May 2018.

Previous funding
Waterland acquired Combell (then part of Intelligent Group) in 2015. In April 2018, Waterland demerged the group into two standalone entities: Sentia, which focuses on providing hosting for large enterprises; and Combell, which focuses on SMEs and freelancers.

Company
Ghent-headquartered Combell was founded in 1999 and provides web hosting and cloud servers. The company generates revenues of around €80m, according to the Waterland website, and operates under four brands: Byte, Combell, DanDomain and UnoEuro. It has operations in Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland.

People
Hg – Nick Jordan (partner); Joris Van Gool (director).
Waterland Private Equity – Cedric van Cauwenberghe (managing partner).
Combell – Jonas Dhaenens (CEO).

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