US private equity firm HgCapital finalized the acquisition of a 69.432% stake in the capital of Dada spa, an Italian company listed at the Milan Stock Exchange founded by entrepreneur  Paolo Barberis in 1995 and now a leading European player operating in the professional digital services business, aimed at building online presence of customers (including, domain registration, hosting, servers, website creation, e-commerce and brand protection) (see here the press release).
The acquisition was made by Italian veichle Dali Italy BidCo spa (which is owned by Dali Holdings Ltd, which in turn is controlled by HgCapital Mercury 2 Nominees Ltd) at a price of 4 euro per share and for a total consideration of 46.325 million euros.
The deal follows an announcement by the company last October (see here a previous post by BeBeez and the presse release). Dali Italy BidCo spa will then launch a mandatory tender offer on the remaining ordinary shares of Dada at the same 4 euro price, aiming at delisting the company from the Stock Exchange. The whole deal will then cost HgCapital a maximum of 66.72 million euros.
The seller of the 69.432% stake in Dada is Libero Acquisition sarl, a Luxembourg-based veichle owned by Orascom TMT Investments sarl, which in turn is controlled by Egiptian entrepreneur Naguib Sawiris.  Mr. Sawiris had bought Dada back in 2013 from RCS spa.
Concurrently with the closing of the transaction, the following individuals resigned from their office as director of Dada:  Fabio Ceccarelli, Andrea Goretti, Wafaa Sayed Latif Mobarak, Tarek Medhat Ahmed Morshed, Onsi Naguib Sawiris and Ayman Mohamed Eltayeb Soliman.
HgCapital’s plan is to confirm the current top management, with particular reference to the ceo Mr. Claudio Corbetta and the general manager and cfo Mr. Lorenzo Lepri, who hold shares in Dada, and that have signed an agreement whereby they have undertaken to sell to the Italian vehicle of Dali Holdings, in the context of the mandatory tender offer, the shares that they will respectively hold in Dada.
With more than 650 thousand companies as customers and 1.9 million domains under maangement, 2 million email accounts and 650 thousand active hostings plans, Dada is one of the leading companies in its sector in Europe.
The company reached 50.9 millions euros in revenues in the 9 months of FY 2017 (from 47.7 millions in 9m 2016) and 9.8 million euros in ebitda (from 8.2 millions) with a 24.5 million euros net financial debt (from 29.5 millions at the end of 2016). In FY 2016 the company had posted 63.7 million euros in revenues (from 62.2 millions in 2015) and 10.7 millions in ebitda (from 10.5 millions).
At the 9m FY 2017 analysts presentation yesterday was announced that Aruba has brought its stake to 10.25% in the last few days, after some shopping on the market.
