Godaddy sells Plus Server to BC Partners for €397m

The transaction has leverage of less than 6x EBITDA, according to a source close to the situation. The company was being marketed from a projected €36m EBITDA and posted revenues of €100m in 2016.

Plus Server will assume €23m in liabilities and retain €12m in cash on the balance sheet.

The vendor will use proceeds from the sale to repay its €500m bridge loan. Godaddy is owned by US private equity firms KKR and Silver Lake. The original acquisition of Plus Server's parent, Host Europe Group (HEG), which closed in April 2017, was funded entirely by a €1.69bn term loan B and a €500m bridge loan, the latter of which Godaddy planned to pay off once part of the company was sold.

BC (the owner of unquote" parent company Acuris) plans to pursue a buy-and-build strategy with Plus Server and has already identified acquisition targets, according to a source. The GP netted a 2.7x return on its previous buy-and-build with the sale of Synlab to Cinven Partners for €1.8bn EV.

Previous funding
Plus Server's parent, HEG, first came under private equity ownership in April 2008 when it was acquired by Oakley Capital in a £120m deal, according to unquote" data. Montagu Private Equity then backed the £222m MBO of the company just two years later, with capital drawn from its third fund.

Cinven acquired HEG from Montagu in July 2013 in a deal valued at £438m. It drew capital for the transaction from its €5.3bn fifth fund. The GP also provided follow-on funding to support the bolt-on of TGOS three months later.

Cinven then sold HEG to Godaddy in December 2016, for an enterprise value of €1.69bn, valuing the company at 11x its adjusted EBITDA for 2016.

Company
Founded in 2015 as a division of HEG, Plus Server is a web-hosting and cloud software company based in Cologne, Germany. It employs more than 300 people and generated €100m in sales in 2016. It has around 4,000 corporate clients and a number of long-term service agreements.

People
BC Partners – Stefan Zuschke (managing partner).
Plus Server – Thomas Strohe (CEO).

Advisers
Equity – Arma Partners (M&A); Raymond James (M&A); EY (financial due diligence, tax); Latham & Watkins (legal); Intuitus (IT due diligence).
Vendor – Oakley Advisory (M&A); Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek (legal); OC&C (commercial due diligence); Deloitte (financial due diligence); EY (tax).

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• Topics
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