Advent offers €1bn to take Unit4 private

The offer includes all issued and outstanding ordinary shares in Unit4 – around 29.7 million units – at a price of €38.75 apiece. The offer price also represents a premium of 32.4% on the closing price of Unit4's shares on 11 October 2013.

Unit4 floated on the NYSE Euronext Amsterdam in 1998. Advent is aiming to delist the business via newco Al Avocado.

Unit4 announced it was in talks with private equity firms regarding a potential takeover last month. At the time, the company stated that interested parties had offered up to €35 per share, giving Unit4 the slightly lower enterprise value of €1.04bn.

Debt
Advent will part-finance the offer with €605m in third-party debt from a syndicate of lenders, which has already been secured. The rest of the funding will be provided as equity by Advent.

Company
Unit4 was founded in 1980 and is headquartered in Sliedrecht with several international offices. The company employs approximately 4,300 staff and recorded turnover of €469.8m in 2012 as well as an EBITDA of €86.2m, up 5.4% and 3.2% on 2011 figures respectively.

The company develops business software and provides a range of support services for its customers. Unit4's software can be deployed either through the cloud or on premises. Customers can purchase either an "all-in-one" enterprise resource planning system or individual software systems, such as Consolidation and Cash, AccountAnalyser and Business Analytics.

Unit4's software is designed to minimise costs and provide simpler, faster solutions to the public and commercial sectors. The company has a base of approximately 5,500 clients across 100 countries. Customers include Exeter College in the UK, City of Oslo council, Pacific International Lines, Teleca and Euronav.

People
Chris Ouwinga and José Duarte are joint CEOs of Unit4, while Ouwinga is also the company's president. In January next year, Ouwinga will take up the position of non-executive director and chairman of Unit4's supervisory board, with Duarte becoming sole CEO of the company. Fred Wakeman is a managing partner at Advent.

Advisers
Equity – Goldman Sachs International (Corporate finance); Allen & Overy (Legal); Marlborough Partners (Debt); Deloitte (Financial due diligence, tax); Bain & Co (Commercial due diligence).
Company – ING Corporate Finance (Corporate finance); Oppenheimer Europe (Corporate finance); De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek (Legal).

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