For sennder cofounder Julius Köhler, the process of acquiring a company is like dating.
It starts with a breakfast or dinner to get to know the other company, and to see whether there’s potential chemistry between the teams and business models; it’s also a chance to identify any red flags.
“When you enter such a relationship and you commit to working together for multiple years, it involves the getting to know you process that starts with mingling, then goes all the way down to entering the marriage,” says Köhler.
In sennder’s nine-year history, the digital freight forwarder unicorn has made six acquisitions, including Uber’s European freight business and Spanish competitor Innroute. Its most recent deal — announced last month — will see it acquire the European land transport business of US global logistics solutions provider CH Robinson.
The transaction marks one of sennder’s biggest yet in terms of the scale of the company it’s acquiring, though sennder says it is unable to share how much the deal is worth.
As of June 30 2024, the value of CH Robinson’s European business unit was around $115m, according to SEC filings.
CH Robinson has 90k customers and manages a freight volume of $22bn globally. And while its European business is just a slice of that pie, there’ll still be challenges ahead to integrate it under the sennder umbrella once the deal is finalised, Köhler says — which is expected to happen in the fourth quarter of this year.
Increasing ‘network density’
The sennder-CH Robinson deal is set to double the German company’s annual revenue from €700m to €1.4bn and add another 700 employees to its payroll — bringing its total employee count to 1,700 across 11 countries. The acquisition will also allow it to enter the UK and Turkey.
For Köhler, the benefits of the deal come down to increased “network density”, which is crucial for a company in the freight forwarding market, he says.
“By taking on further shippers, as well as further carriers, we’ll be able to offer a broader service to our customers and have a higher density of carriers in Europe that will allow us to operate a more efficient network than we could, or have done, in the past.”
Sennder’s broader M&A strategy
Sennder’s M&A transactions fall into two buckets. On one side are traditional logistics players, CH Robinson or Cars&Cargo, a Dutch freight forwarder operating across France and Benelux which sennder acquired in May 2021; on the other side are “industry peers”, like Uber Freight or French freight company Everoad, the latter of which sennder scooped up in February 2021.
When deciding on whether to acquire a company, sennder considers: whether the transaction can increase its footprint in other geographies, whether the company’s tech infrastructure is compatible with sennder’s and whether the company’s culture fits with its own.
It’s that last one that Köhler says is a big hurdle when companies go through the acquisition process.
Culture is probably the hardest thing to build and to develop for a company itself, and it’s also the most difficult thing in such an M&A transaction to merge the two sides.
“Culture is probably the hardest thing to build and to develop for a company itself, and it’s also the most difficult thing in such an M&A transaction to merge the two sides,” he says.
With CH Robinson being a large traditional player, and a listed company, the dynamics of the acquisition are also different to previous acquisitions sennder has done. “CH Robinson is certainly on a different scale to previous transactions that we’ve done where the M&A process is much longer,” says Köhler.
“There’s more players involved, their investment banks and lawyers etc, which means some of the process is slightly more difficult — especially keeping in mind that C.H Robinson is a publicly listed company, so it’s a very closely monitored process with rules of procedures and engagements that need to be followed in the entire process.”
The details of how the CH Robinson deal will pan out haven’t yet been decided.
But Köhler says sennder has identified several “work streams” — essentially, areas of CH Robinson’s business such as HR, finance and commercial — that will be merged with sennder’s one by one under its brand and operating system.
Keeping an eye out
Sennder doesn’t have a set plan for how many acquisitions it wants to make in the next five years and instead is open as and when potential deals present themselves.
“M&A always comes opportunistically,” says Köhler. “There’s clearly a strategy behind how we handle M&A, but we’re sort of dependent on the market in terms of when M&A opportunities happen.”
One of sennder’s other cofounders, Nicolaus Schefenacker, handles M&A for the company, together with a team whose job it is to monitor the markets and identify possible opportunities.
Once potential M&A candidates are spotted, larger discussions take place with the wider executive team on whether the company in question could fit well with all aspects of sennder’s business.
“Whenever M&A opportunities become hot, everyone’s involved, including the CEO, CFO, CCO,” says Köhler.
The CH Robinson deal was pretty competitive, says Köhler, but sennder was fortunate to have an “in”, in the form of its CTO Kollen Glynn, who previously worked at the company as VP of software engineering.
“He knew what integration work was necessary and what was going to be coming towards us, which was certainly a competitive advantage that we had in the entire process,” says Köhler.
The future
M&A deal volume was down 14% in Europe last year, but there are signs that it will pick up over the rest of the year, if not in 2025.
Will we see more M&A activity happening in the freight-forwarding industry?
“I think it’s not a question that can be generalised,” says Köhler. “I think M&A is a great opportunity to focus on your core business, and on the other side, an opportunity for companies to continue their growth journey as we have done.”
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/sennder-acquisition-strategy/
