Casa.it, a leading residential and commercial property websites in Italy, and similar leading websites in France, Germany and Luxembourg and the atHome brand which had both been acquired by Oakley Capital in December 2016 (see here a previous post by BeBeez) saw a hike in revenues and margins in FY 2016-2017.
Alex Collins, Oakley’s partner in charge of the investment actually told MF Milano Finanza that “revenues in the FY endin on June 30th were 10% up to 38.2 million euros from 34.7 millions the year before and that ebitda jumped by 65% to 11 million euros from 6,6 millions. All that thanks especially to significant synergies with price comparrison websites Facile.it and Mutui.it, which in turn are growing by 25% per year with a 30% ebitda margin”. Oakley actually also owns a 75% stake in Facile.it since 2014 that in turn bought Mutui.it in April 2016 (see here a previous post by BeBeez).
Oakley, which invested in Casa-it and atHome through its Oakley Capital Private Equity III fund, has fiannced a management buyout of the two companies with the management team that invested for a 20% stake in a 132.6 million euros deal. The seller was Sidney-listed group Rea Group.
“The major effort was for investments in technology and a complete renewal of the websites that had been left apart from the previous owners who were focusing on the development of other geographies of their business”, Mr. Collins said, adding that “Oakley has a strong experience in the consumer digital sector”.
Acutally Oakley since 2009 has been a major shareholder in German web portal Verivox, the major comparrison portal for utility prices and prices by tlc operatore, insurance and financial products; since 2015 Oakley also controls Parship, a major web portal for singles looking for meeting their soul-mate; and finally Oakley had bought in 2011 and sold in 2013 the web portal Emesa, where it is possibile to be buy with a strong discount in an auction unsold tickets for trips and shows.
Oakley is also quite strong in the education sector. Actually the private equity firm has been the major shareholder of Educas, an investment veichle founded by Nadim M. Nsouli, a former partner of Providence Equity Partners, which since 2013 has been buying top private schools all over the world. In Italy Educas bought (through the veichle Inspired) the International School of Europe Group. The seller was HIG Capital (see here a previous post by BeBeez).
