Innova, HarbourVest et al. in €100m Benestra exit

Mikkel Stern-Peltz
27 May 2016

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A private equity consortium including HarbourVest and Innova Capital has exited Slovakian telecoms provider Benestra to Sandberg Partners.

The enterprise value of the deal, which saw the group of GPs fully exit its stake in the Bratislava-headquartered company, was said to be around €100m. At that price, the deal would represent an entry multiple of around 6.1x EBITDA for Sandberg Capital.

In addition to Innova and HarbourVest, the PE consortium also included Columbia Capital, M/C Partners, Oak Investment Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners, all of which became owners of Benestra through their acquisition of CEE telecoms conglomerate GTS in 2008.

Shawn Atkinson, partner at law firm Orrick, which advised the sellers, told unquote" the exit had been run as a single-track structured process, with substantial interest in the asset from both private equity and trade buyers.

"It was an exciting deal with lots of interest, and it was good to see a hot auction. We haven't seen a lot of those since 2007-2008, so it's nice to see an asset that is in a smaller geographic location still attracting a huge amount of interest," said Atkinson.

Previous funding
Benestra was originally part of the GTS Central Europe telco group, which was acquired through a 2008 corporate carve-out by the private equity group and funded by a mezzanine package provided by Syntaxis Capital and Indigo Capital.

In November 2013, the group exited the majority of GTS to Deutsche Telekom for €546m, retaining the Slovakian operations.

Company
Headquartered in Bratislava, Benestra is a Slovakian alternative telecommunications provider focusing on corporate clients.

The company reaped EBITDA of €16.3m from €46.4m of revenues in 2015.

People
Benestra – Piotr Sieluk (CEO).

Advisers
Vendor – Orrick, Shawn Atkinson, Emma Raleigh, Katrina Murphy, Amy Roper, Alice Taylor, David Griffiths, Rosalind Seeley, Jackie Harper (legal); Rothschild (corporate finance); Corpin (corporate finance).
Equity – AK Relevans (legal); PwC (financial due diligence).