EQT buys Casa.it from Oakley Capital

Alessia Argentieri
17 September 2020

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Swedish private equity firm EQT has acquired Italian online real estate marketplace Casa.it from Oakley Capital.

Casa.it's management team, led by CEO Luca Rossetto, will stay on with the business.

The GP has invested in the company via EQT IX, which was launched in January 2020 with a €14.75bn target and a €15bn hard-cap. The fund is expected to hold a final close by October 2020.

The vehicle targets primarily majority equity investments in companies with strong market positions and cashflows, deploying equity tickets of €150m-1bn.

This acquisition follows the recent purchase of Spanish online real estate platform Idealista, acquired by EQT from Apax for €1.3bn.

In addition to Casa.it and Idealista, EQT IX's portfolio also includes Swedish enterprise software provider IFS. EQT sold a minority stake in IFS to US private equity firm TA Associates in July 2020 in a deal valuing the company at in excess of €3bn. As part of the deal, the majority stake in IFS owned by EQT was transferred from EQT VII to its successor funds EQT VIII and EQT IX.

Following the purchase of Casa.it, EQT IX is expected to be 10-15% invested, based on its target fund size.

The GP intends to boost Casa.it's growth by further developing its portfolio of services for real estate agents, bolstering its penetration in the Italian market and strengthening its position in the real estate sector.

This sale ends a three-year holding period for Oakley, which bought the company as part of the acquisition of a portfolio of real estate businesses, which comprised Casa.it in Italy and AtHome.lu in Luxembourg.

The deal saw Oakley back the management team to carve out the businesses from parent company Rea Group and provide a €50m equity ticket for the deal, while the remaining capital was funded via an undisclosed debt package provided by Permira.

Oakley drew capital for the acquisition from its third fund, Oakley Capital Private Equity III, which closed on €800m in 2017, exceeding its initial target of €750m.

The divestment of Casa.it follows the sale of AtHome to Mayfair Equity Partners, which took place in February 2020. The transaction saw Mayfair acquire a majority stake alongside the existing management team led by Soufiane Saadi, while Oakley Capital's third-generation fund retained a minority stake. EQT Credit provided a unitranche facility to support the acquisition.

With the full exit of Casa.it, together with the partial sale of AtHome and the retained minority stake, Oakley Fund III's gross return on investment to date comes to 2.0x money with a 23% IRR.

In addition, further upside is expected from the minority stake retained in AtHome. Oakley Capital Investments' share of proceeds from this transaction, which is at a 50% premium to the 30 June 2020 carrying value, will be approximately £34m. This represents an uplift of 7 pence per share to the company's NAV at 30 June 2020.

Company
Established in 1996 and headquartered in Milan, Casa.it is an online real estate platform for renting and buying properties.

It is used by around 14,000 real estate agents with more than one million property listings on its website.

People
EQT – Bert Janssens (partner, global co-head TMT).
Oakley Capital – Peter Dubens (managing partner).
Casa.it – Luca Rossetto (CEO).

Advisers
Company – Mediobanca (corporate finance).