Indaco Venture, Invesco invest €3m in Expert System

Indaco deployed €2m and Invesco provided the remainder. They acquired a total of 1.11 million newly issued shares at a price of 270 cents per share.

The company intends to use the fresh capital to further expand internationally, primarily across the US market, enlarge its marketing and sale networks, and develop additional features to build a wider and more diversified product offering.

Mainfirst Bank acted as placing agent and Clifford Chance as legal adviser in the share sale.

Previous funding
Indaco invested in Expert System via Fondo Atlante Ventures Mezzogiorno when the company was listed on the AIM segment of the Italian stock exchange in February 2014.

The fund targets technology companies primarily based in southern Italy and is backed by Intesa Sanpaolo and the Italian ministry for public administration and innovation.

At the time, Indaco retained a minority stake in Expert System's subsidiary, AdmantX, a provider of natural language processing (NLP) semantic-based solutions for contextual advertising.

AdmantX was sold by Indaco and Expert System to Vista Equity Partners-backed Integral Ad Science (IAS), a US digital ad verification company, in November 2019. The deal gave the business an enterprise value of €16m.

Company
Expert System specialises in natural language processing, cognitive computing and text analytics.

Its flagship product is Cogito, a cognitive computing software based on artificial intelligence algorithms, able to read and understand written language and help companies with compliance, risk management, security and intelligence.

Expert System's software is used by Italian and international companies operating in a wide range of sectors, such as banking, insurance, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, energy, defence and media. Its client base includes Zurich Group, Lloyd's of London, Axa XL, Intesa Sanpaolo, Gruppo Eni, Generali and Sanofi, among others.

The company is headquartered in Modena, with additional offices across Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, the UK, Canada and the US. It generated EBITDA of €5.5m from revenues of €31.6m in 2019, and reported a net debt of €2.8m.

People
Indaco Venture Partners – Alvise Bonivento (investment director).
Expert System – Walt Mayo (CEO).

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