Norstat owner Triton Partners explores sale via William Blair

The mid-market specialist investor has hired advisors at William Blair in the past one-to-two months to marshal an exit from Oslo, Norway-headquartered Norstat, which collects data for consumer market research in Europe, two of the sources said.

Deliberations remain at an early stage with the timing of a formal auction yet to be decided, the sources added. William Blair is expected to run a relatively narrow auction process, one of the sources added.

Norstat generates EBIT in the region of NOK 150m to NOK 200m (EUR 12m – EUR 17m), according to one of the sources. The sellside is expecting a mid-teens EBITDA multiple for the business, two of the sources said. The company posted sales of around EUR 80m in 2022, as per Triton’s website.

German market research firm GfK's consumer panels business could be a suitable comparable to Norstat, according to one of the sources. GfK sold the business to UK-based polling company YouGov earlier this month after GfK put the business on the bloc to help secure approval from the European Commission (EC) for its combination with Advent International-owned NielsenIQ.

At the time of publishing, Norstat had a score of 45 according to Mergermarket’s Likely to Exit (LTE) predictive algorithm*, partially driven by the asset being held by Triton for 1,370 days, which is close to the median four-year period for sponsor-backed exits. Triton’s Smaller Mid Cap Fund completed the acquisition of Norstat from private equity firm Verdane and investment company Foinco at undisclosed terms in November 2019.

Last month, Norstat announced it had acquired UK data collection provider Panelbase at an undisclosed price. The acquisition will add 370,000 panel members to its UK consumer panel.

Founded in 1997, Norstat has a network of over 2 million respondents across 19 countries and operates a proprietary base of more than 650,000 panelists.

Representatives for Triton, Norstat and GfK declined to comment. William Blair 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. 

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

• Topics
• Exits
• Support services
• Nordics
• Triton Partners
• Norway