This is the 3rd successful divestment realised by Nazca in the last 6 months, after the sale of Guzmán Gastronomía last April and of El Derecho to Ediciones Francis Lefevre at the end of last year.
In 2007, Nazca (through its Nazca II fund), together with Aleph Capital and Acens management team, acquired the company through a Management Buy Out (MBO) with the aim of speeding up its growth and consolidating its leading position in value added services to small and medium sized companies. The project was based on 3 main drivers: sector expansion, change in the business mix towards more value added niches and the selective acquisition of companies, with a successful result both in sales growth (CAGR of 21% for the period 2006-2010) as well as in profitability increase.
According to Carlo Carbó from Nazca “we are pleased to have reached this agreement with Telefónica for the disposal of Acens as it is a very positive and satisfactory transaction for all parties involved which also widely fulfils Nazca’s profitability objectives and those of its investors”.
Since 2007, Acens has evolved towards providing value added services, such as managed hosting or cloud computing, increasing from 51% of sales in 2006 to 61% in 2010, supported by a specialised sales team and the best available technology in the market. During these years, Acens’ has developed a specialised sales force through three channels: B2B, where the company has more than 25 professionals and a pre-engineering team; web sales; and an extensive net of distributors. Additionally, in the years since Nazca’s entry, more than €15 million have been invested, of which, €9 million have been dedicated to the continued improvement of its Madrid and Barcelona Centres.
Acquisitions have been a key growth driver in a highly fragmented market. Acens’ cash generation has allowed the funding of four acquisitions: Hostalia, Ferca, Veloxia and Centro de Datos, which have incorporated more than 25.000 customers with possibilities for cross selling (70% of Acens’ new sales are made to existing clients) and have improved Acens’ market positioning for the offering of “packaged services” at lower prices which has accelerated the growth of the company’s client base. Significant synergies have also been achieved following the integration of the different data centers.
Advisors of the sellers have been the investment bank Arcano, DLA Piper as legal advisor and the legal, fiscal and financial due diligence was done by KPMG.
About Acens
Acens belongs to Acens Technologies Group and it is a leading company provider of hosting, housing services and connectivity solutions for the corporate market as well as pioneer in the development of complete and market competitive cloud hosting solutions. Acens develops its activity since 1997 and it has Data Centers of more than 6.000 square meters in Madrid, Barcelona. The company is also present in Valencia and Bilbao.
About Nazca
Nazca Capital is a Spanish private equity firm in the low to mid-market segment that operates since 2001. Nazca leads its market segment, both by volume of deals and by profitability of its investments. Since 2001 it has completed 33 transactions: 13 investments in companies, 11 further built-ups and 9 divestments where Nazca has obtained annual returns for its investors above 45%.
Nazca has invested and divested partially two funds, Nazca I and Nazca II with sizes of €100 million and €150 million respectively. At present, Nazca manages its third fund Nazca III that has €200 million from European institutional investors, being one of them Alpinvest, the biggest European private equity investor.
At present, Nazca is a shareholder in four companies: Hedonai (aesthetic sector), Autor (outdoor advertising), élogos (e-learning) and Logifrío (specialized logistics). The companies where Nazca has divested are: Svenson (hair treatments), Rodilla (fast food), Dibaq (animal feeding) Unipost (postal operator), Vinartis (wine sector), Lizarrán (food-retail), El Derecho (legal contents), Guzmán (gourmet food) and Acens (hosting).