BC-backed Springer Nature eyes May IPO

Oscar Geen
19 March 2018

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BC Partners portfolio company Springer Nature is considering an IPO in Q2 2018, Unquote understands.

[Editor's note: BC Partners is the majority owner of Acuris, the parent company of Unquote]

The firm enlisted JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley in November to prepare a listing on the Frankfurt stock exchange, with the aim of raising €700-800m in a €4-5bn flotation.

BC Partners owns a 47% stake in the business alongside German publisher Holtzbrinck after the merger of its portfolio company Springer Science+Business Media with Holtzbrinck's Macmillan Science and Education in January 2015.

The GP acquired Springer Science+Business Media for an enterprise value of €3.3bn, supported by a €2.3bn debt package, in June 2013. Previous owners EQT Partners and Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (GIC) had announced plans for an IPO shortly before the sale to BC.

Springer Nature employs 13,000 people and posted revenues of €1.64bn for 2017. The company publishes scientific, technical and medical titles in English, German and Dutch. It also supplies scientific and academic books and journals to customers in 120 countries worldwide. The company is headquartered in Berlin.

The European IPO market appears to have reopened somewhat in 2017, following a quiet 2016. There were 42 private-equity-backed flotations in 2017, compared with just 28 in the whole of 2016, according to Unquote Data. However, it still lagged behind the post-crisis activity spike in 2013, 2014 and 2015, which recorded 51, 83 and 52 listings respectively.

The German IPO market, on the other hand, had a record year in 2017 in terms of value, a large part of which was accounted for by the listing of two unicorns backed by Berlin-based VC Rocket Internet. It floated stakes in two food delivery services in 2017 with a combined value of more than €6bn, starting with takeaway service Delivery Hero at a €4.4bn market cap in June and followed that with meal kit company HelloFresh at €1.7bn in November.

BC Partners and Springer Nature declined to comment.