Bid Equity buys majority stake in Infopark

"The deal was relatively far on when lockdown came in," a spokesperson for Bid Equity told Unquote. "The process began in Q4 2019 and we almost closed a few weeks after lockdown came about, but it had some impact on prolonging the closing and financing."

Asked about the financing for the deal, the spokesperson told Unquote: "The deal is all-equity for now. We do buy-and-build in the small-cap software space – the intention is to find complementary synergetic companies, funding acquisitions all or partially via bank debt. We usually make all equity deals in the beginning, then add debt at a later stage."

Infopark is the second investment from Bid Equity Fund II, which held a final close in November 2019 on €125m, surpassing its target of €100m. The fund aims to make 8-10 platform investments, deploying equity tickets of around €15m per company and seeking B2B software businesses with EBITDA of €500,000-5m valued at €3-75m.

Bid Equity generally pursues buy-and-build strategies for its platform acquisitions in the B2B software space and also plans to do so for Infopark, the spokesperson told Unquote. "The add-ons are likely to be relatively small, financed via all-equity, then adding debt. We will target companies in the EV €10-40m sweet spot, with EBITDA €1-3m, in the DACH region and beyond."

The spokesperson added: "The platform will be built around sales technology. Sales-related processes is an attractive software sector – there are big players like Salesforce or SAP, but there is plenty of room for specialised business software around this. We want to create a platform enabling medium to large organisations to optimise and digitise their sales processes further."

Asked about Bid Equity's current dealflow and investment plans, the firm's spokesperson said: "We intend to accelerate our investment pace now. We plan to make additional add-ons for both existing platforms. We also hope to do one more platform deal before the end of the year and we have a number of deals in the making. Our primary focus is vertical sector-specific business software, addressing niche segment needs."

Company
Founded in 1994, Infopark is a developer of a content management system (CMS) that assists companies with digital projects, including the development of websites, web applications, portals and apps. The Berlin-based business generates revenues of around €10m and has 80 employees.

People
Bid Equity – Helge Hofmeister, Axel Jansen, Lars Kloppsteck (managing partners).

Advisers
Equity – AC Christes & Partner (financial due diligence, tax); AHB Rechtsanwälte Steuerberater (legal); Singular Group (commercial due diligence); TZConsulting (tax).
Company – Lincoln International (M&A).

• Tweet  
• Facebook  
• LinkedIn  
• Google plus  
• Send to  

• Topics
• Buyouts
• DACH
• Technology
• Germany
• Exclusive