Abris exits Urgent Cargus to Mid Europa

The exit marks the end of a five-year holding period for Abris, which acquired the firm from its second buyout fund, the Abris CEE Mid-Market Fund II, which closed on its €450m target in January 2013.

Several other bidders – including strategic buyers – were interested, Abris investment director Adrian Stanculescu told Unquote, though Mid Europa's track records in Romania and e-commerce saw it become the preferred bidder.

Fellow PE firm Warburg Pincus and strategic bidder Hungarian Post were both involved in the late stages of the sale process, run by Rothschild, according to a report by Unquote sister publication Mergermarket. The report added that the business generated revenues of €83m in 2017 and was expected to fetch a valuation of €120-150m.

When it originally acquired Cargus, Abris's investment team was quite confident it could build the company to a certain scale that would interest both strategic buyers looking to enter the market, as well as financial sponsors.

The deal is Mid Europa's second notable secondary buyout in Romania, having sourced Romanian supermarket chain Profi Rom Food from Poland-based GP Enterprise Investors in November 2016. Enterprise Investors was said to have made 7x money on its €533m sale to Mid Europa.

Previous funding
The Romanian division of Abris bought Romanian parcel service Cargus from Deutsche Post (DHL) in 2013. The investor took over the company's client base, employees and operational bases, as well as all the domestic courier business in Romania, while DHL Express Romania focused on international parcel services. The two companies entered a supplier partnership under which Cargus continued to offer DHL Express international services via the Cargus sales and retail network.

The deal was made via Abris CEE Mid-Market Fund II, which held a final close on its target of €450m in January 2013. Two years after acquiring Cargus, Abris merged it with one of its direct competitors, Urgent Curier, taking advantage of the synergies between the two companies and renaming the enlarged business Urgent Cargus. A further five bolt-on acquisitions followed: TCE, CRX, Otto, Sprint and X-Curier.

Company
Cargus is a parcel service company set up in Bucharest in 1991. It was acquired by DHL in 1998. Since the acquisition by Abris, the company claims to have increased the companies' revenues five-fold. It works with around 2,000 couriers delivering around 30 million parcels per year.

People
Abris Capital Partners – Adrian Stanculescu (investment director).
Urgent Cargus – Gian Sharp (CEO).

Advisers
Company – Rothschild (corporate finance).

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• Topics
• Buyouts
• Exits
• CEE
• Consumer
• Romania
• Abris Capital Partners
• Mid Europa Partners
• Secondary buyout