After having announced a definitive agreement for the acquisition of a 27% stake in Italy’s player in IT outsourcing services for banks and financial institutions Cedacri just before Christmas (see here the press release), FSI sgr signed the closing of the deal just before the end of 2017 (see here the press release).
The remaining 73% of Cedacri will be still owned by its 14 shareholders and major customers banks: Banca Mediolanum (15,6%), Gruppo Cassa di Risparmio di Asti (11,1%), Gruppo Banco di Desio e della Brianza (10,1%), Unipol Banca (7,5%), Banca Popolare di Bari (6,6%), Cassa di Risparmio di Bolzano (6,5%), Banca del Piemonte (4,2%), Credem (3,9%), Cassa Sovvenzioni e Risparmio fra il Personale di Banca d’Italia (2,0%), Reale Mutua Assicurazioni (1,3%), Banca del Fucino (1,1%), Banca Valsabbina (1,1%), Cassa di Risparmio di Cento (1,0%) and Cassa di Risparmio di Volterra (1,0%).
More in detail, the investment is to be made by the FSI Mid-Market Growth Equity Fund, which is also going to raise its stake to 33% in the next few months.
The fund will invest 99 million euros in equity and the company has been valued about 8.7x the 2017 estimated ebitda (or 42 million euros with about 330 million euros in revenues, after 275 millions in revenues and 40 millions in ebitda in 2016) which means about 370 million euros plus 59 millions of net cash for a total of 430 million euros in enterprise value (equal to the equity value in this case). The deal has been done without leverage as the company needs financial flexibility in order to make future acquisitions.
Cedacri was advised by Rothschild as for financial issues, by Pedersoli Studio Legale as for legal issues and Kpmg as for industrial issues. FSI sgr was instead supported by Partners (owned by Guido Corbetta) and Deutsche Bank as for financial matters, while legal advisor was BonelliErede.
Cedacri shareholders’ meeting also appointed a new Board of Directors. Renato Dalla Riva has been confirmed as chairman, while other members are: Giovanni Pirovano (vice chairman), Renato Barbieri, Carlo Costa, Carlo Demartini, Luigi Jacobini, Stefano Lado, Barnaba Ravanne, Marco Tugnolo and Marco Valcamonica. Salvatore Stefanelli has been confirmed as managing director.
“Cedacri has a significant development potential led by innovation, scale and sector consolidation”
FSI’s ceo Maurizio Tamagnini said, adding that “the FSI team has successfully invested in the fintech sector in the past and considers the equity story similar to Sia a leading Italian payment systems provider”.
This is the first investment of FSI sgr, which recently finalized the second closing of the fund with
total capital commitments of about 1.2 billion euros (see here a previous post by BeBeez). The current investor base includes Italian and international investors, including Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, the European Investment Fund, sovereign wealth funds of Middle East, Far East and Central Asia, asset managers, European insurance companies and banks, bank foundations and family offices of large industrial groups.
