Summa Equity's Documaster tipped as likely exit candidate for 2024

Gustav Hoejmark-Jensen and Auri Aittokallio
06 July 2023

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Documaster is a likely exit candidate for sponsor Summa Equity, which could put the Norwegian digital document platform provider on the market early 2024, according to three sources familiar with the company.

The digital document storage, tagging and search platform has EBITDA between EUR 2m-EUR 4m, two of the sources said. Documaster has been held by Summa for six years and, at the time of publishing, has a score of 53 on Mergermarket's Likely to Exit (LTE) predictive algorithm, to which the holding period is a substantial contributor.

The company generated EUR 8m in FY22 revenue, up from EUR 6m in 2021 and EUR 3m in 2020, according to Summa's website. It booked a EUR 5.48m loss in FY21, according to other publicly available financials.

Summa wants to wait for visibility of full-year 2023 financials before putting the asset on the market, one of the sources said.

Documaster would benefit from an add-on acquisition ahead of a potential sale, to grow the business and make it more attractive to potential buyers, another of the sources said.

Acos, a Norway-based software development company, is a competitor to Documaster, one of the sources said, noting that the segment is a crowded space.

In 2017, Summa Equity acquired 52% of Documaster for NOK 100m (EUR 10.6m) which at the time valued the company at NOK 193m (EUR 20.5m). In July 2021, Documaster acquired Norway-based Infoworker and Sweden-based Comprima Software, and raised NOK 135m via a share issue at a value of NOK 650m, as reported.

Founded in 2014 as a spin-off from Norselab, Documaster provides software and digital solutions for document management, archives, data migration, contract management, and integration with business systems as well as Microsoft add-ins, according to its website.

The business lists several public-sector clients on its website and manages 45m documents, or more than 97.6 terabytes of data.

In May, Documaster appointed CFO Adam Berg as interim CEO, while a search for a permanent CEO is ongoing, according to its website.

Summa Equity and Documaster did not respond to requests for comment.

*Mergermarket's LTE predictive analytics assign a score to sponsor-backed companies to help track and predict when an exit could occur through M&A, an IPO, a direct listing or a deSPAC transaction.