BC-backed Springer Nature sets price range for €3.6bn IPO

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

The company is targeting proceeds of €1.2bn from the primary placement of 112,999,554 shares and a total volume of up to €1.6bn. An expected free float of up to 44.8% corresponds to a targeted market capitalisation of €3.6bn.

BC Partners will make a secondary placement of up to 18,983,925 existing shares and overallotment of up to 13,198,347 additional existing shares.

Holtzbrinck publishing group will acquire new shares equivalent to €100m meaning its stake will fall from 53% to around 40%, but it will retain a controlling position under the company's new structure.

BC 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.

Springer generated EBITDA of €521m from revenues of €1.64bn in 2017. Net leverage will be reduced to 3.5x adjusted EBITDA following the transaction. 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 and employs 13,000 people.

JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley are acting as joint global coordinators and joint bookrunners. Bank of America Merrill Lynch, BNP Paribas, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs International and Societe Generale have been mandated as joint bookrunners.

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