Oakley Capital acquires Primavera for Ekon merger

Greg Gille
22 June 2021

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Oakley Capital has agreed to acquire Pimavera Business Software Solutions, a Portuguese business management software company.

The company will be combined with existing Oakley Capital portfolio company Ekon, a Spanish provider of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, to create a new group under the name Grupo Primavera. Oakley said in a statement that the resulting business will be the largest independent provider of business software in Iberia.

The company was acquired from its founders, José Dionísio and Jorge Batista, who will invest alongside Oakley in the merged entity and continue to co-lead the Primavera business.

Oakley said that Grupo Primavera will accelerate its deployment of cloud solutions organically through investment in product development and go-to-market initiatives, as well as through further acquisitions.

The GP invested via Oakley Capital Private Equity III, which is the fund that holds Ekon. The vehicle held a final close on €800m in mid 2017, and was around 70% deployed a year later, according to Unquote Data. The fund targets deals with an enterprise value of €60-300m in western European mid-market enterprises.

Oakley acquired Ekon from its parent company, Netherlands-based and then Advent-backed Unit4, in 2019. According to Spanish financial newspaper Expansión, the total value of the deal was around the €50m mark.

Since then, Oakley has raised Oakley Capital Fund IV. The fund held a final close on €1.46bn in July 2019, above its €1.2bn target. That fund was put to use earlier in June when Oakley agreed to invest in ICP Education, an independent group of UK children's nurseries.

Oakley declined to comment on the deal value and Primavera's financials when contacted by Unquote.

Company
Founded in 1993, Primavera provides ERP and cloud business software solutions to 32,000 SMEs across Portugal and Portuguese-speaking Africa.

The wider Grupo Primavera will comprise Primavera, Ekon and five additional bolt-on acquisitions made over the last 12 months (Tabulae, Contasimple, Billage, Diez Software and Professional Software). The newly established group will have 55,000 customers and around €60m of revenues.

People
Oakley Capital - Peter Dubens (managing partner).