Nazca sells Acens to Telefónica
Nazca has reached an agreement with Grupo Telefónica for the sale of Acens Technologies, one of the companies of reference in the provision of technological hosting and cloud computing services for SMEs.
It is the third divestment successfully carried out by Nazca in the last six months, after having sold Guzmán Gastronomía in April and El Derecho to Ediciones Francis Lefevre and the end of last year.
In 2007, Nazca (through Nazca Fund II) along with Aleph Capital, and the management team, acquired Acens through a Management Buy Out (MBO) with the objective of accelerating the growth of the company and consolidating its position of leadership in added value services for SMEs. The project was based on three pillars of growth: the expansion of the sector, the change of the business mix toward niches of greater added value and the selective acquisition of companies with a successful result in both growth of sales (21% annually for the 2006-2010 period) and in increased profitability.
Carlos Carbó of Nazca stated “We are very satisfied to have been able to reach an agreement with Telefónica for the sale of Acens as it is a highly positive and satisfactory transaction for all parties involved, also amply fulfilling the profitability objectives of Nazca and its investors.”
Since 2007, Acens has developed toward the provision of services with greater added value such as managed hosting and cloud computing, and its business mix has grown from 51% of sales in 2006 to 61% in 2010, supported by a strong specialization in sales and the best technology available on the market. During these years, Acens developed a specialised sales force through three channels: B2B, where the company has 25 professionals and a pre-engineering team; website sales; and an extensive network of distributors. Additionally, in the years since Nazca’s incorporation, 15 million euros more have been invested, of which 9 million have been dedicated to the continuous improvement of its Data Centres in Madrid and Barcelona.
The final pillar of growth was through the acquisitions of a highly fragmented market. The Acens cash generation allowed the financing of the acquisition of four companies: Hostalia, Ferca, Veloxia and Centro de Datos, which have incorporated over 25,000 clients with possibilities for cross-selling of Acens products of higher added value (70% of new sales made to existing clients), which has improved the position on the market of “packaged” products at a lower price to accelerate the increase of the client base and the achievement of significant synergies upon integrating the different data centres.
The investment bank which acted as advisors was Arcano for the seller, and the legal advisor intervening was DLA Piper for the seller. Additionally, the legal, fiscal and financial due diligence was carried out by KPMG for the seller.