Silverfleet in €310m Cimbria trade sale

Mikkel Stern-Peltz
30 June 2016

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Silverfleet Capital has sold Danish agriculture machinery business Cimbria in a тЌ310m trade sale to listed US agriculture group Agco for around three times the GPтs original purchase price.

A source close to the deal said the GP reaped a multiple of around 3.3x on the sale, which comes three-and-a-half years after Silverfleet acquired Cimbria for €137m and brings to an end nearly a decade of private equity ownership of the asset.

During the holding period, Silverfleet substantially reduced its investment debt, according to a source with knowledge of the deal. The source told unquote" the sale had followed a structured process that garnered interest from a wide range of buyers, including trade and private equity, and that the GP had not pursued an IPO track alongside.

Investment bank Baird ran the structured process leading to the sale, which sees the company assumed under NYSE-listed Agco's corporate umbrella.

Previous funding
According to unquote" data, Cimbria first came under private equity control in June 2007 when EQT tapped its €372m EQT Opportunity Fund to buy the company from the founding family.

EQT exited four years later, when Danish GP Axcel completed an SBO of Cimbria in a reported DKK 500-600m equity-value deal through its DKK 3.6bn Axcel IV vehicle.

Silverfleet became the third and final private equity owner of Cimbria in January 2011, when it completed an €137m tertiary buyout of the company from Axcel.

Company
Headquartered in Thisted, Cimbria is a manufacturer of equipment for the processing, handling and storage of cereal and seed corn.

The company was founded in 1947 and employs 900 people across production facilities in Denmark, Austria, Italy and the Czech Republic. Cimbria generated DKK 1.3bn of revenue in the year to 30 September 2015.

People
Silverfleet Capital – Gareth Whiley (partner).

Advisers
Vendor – Baird, Julien Darmon, Mike Lindemann (corporate finance); Travers Smith (legal); Accura (legal); Deloitte (financial due diligence, tax); Roland Berger (commercial due diligence).