German laundry,home and beauty care giant Henkel announced yesterday it is going to buy the Italian-French domestic cleaning products and insecticides maker Spotless Group for an enterprise value of 940 million euros (download here the press release).
Paneuropean private equity operator BC Partners as Spotless’ unique shareholder had manded Rotschild and JPMorgan few weeks ago to organized a competitive auction for the sale of the group starting next September (see a previous post of BeBeez). However Henkel’s offer arrived in advance and was thought to be quite good by the fund. Actually a 940 million euros enterprise value is well in line with lthe expected figures of 900 million to 1 billion euros.
Spotless group reached 300 million euros in revenues in 2013 up from 268 millions in 2012 when it reached an ebitda margin of more than 20pct. In the last few years Spotless grew a lot thanks to a series of brands acquisitions all over Europe both in the insecticide and in the laudry and homecare products sector.
BC Partners bought the Spotless Group in 2010 from Axa Private Equity (recently renamed Ardian) European Capital and Italian Gualandi family on a 600 million euros enterprise value. The group was created following the acquisition in 2005 of the market leader in French laundry and homecare products, Eau Ecarlate, and Italian laundry, homecare and insecticides maker Guaber which distributes well known brands like stain remover Grey, detergent Vim and insecticide Vape (the only brand which is not owned by Spotless. However Guaber has been given the brand as a unique licence for Europe by Japanese owner  Fumakilla since decades).
