Home / Deals / Advised BC Partners on its acquisition of PlusServer, the leading German managed hosting and cloud infrastructure provider

Advised BC Partners on its acquisition of PlusServer, the leading German managed hosting and cloud infrastructure provider
Jul 2017
acquired
(a subsidary of GoDaddy)
$456 million
  • Sector: Cloud Managed Services
  • Deal Type: Founder-led Businesses; Private Equity Deals
  • Engagement type: Buyside
  • Size: $456 million
Scroll

Arma Partners is pleased to announce that it has acted as financial advisor to BC Partners on its acquisition of PlusServer, the leading managed hosting and cloud infrastructure player to the German Mittelstand, from GoDaddy.

Headquartered in Cologne, Germany, PlusServer is a leading pure play managed hosting and managed cloud infrastructure provider for corporate clients in Germany. The German managed hosting and cloud infrastructure markets remain highly fragmented and PlusServer has the scale and track record to continue its role as the leading consolidator in the German market. Its extensive product portfolio is targeted at companies with critical dependency on the availability and performance of their IT and PlusServer will continue to develop its hybrid cloud capabilities under BC’s ownership, benefitting from increased adoption of these services in Germany.

The company was established in 2015 as a result of the merger of three hosting businesses: intergenia, the managed hosting division of Host Europe Group and Telefonica Online Services. In 2016, PlusServer’s workforce of around 300 employees generated c.€100 million in revenues.

Arma played a key role in facilitating this transaction, which is one of the most important in the European hosting market to date. This transaction further reinforces Arma Partners’ market leading sector expertise in the managed hosting and cloud infrastructure markets and our ability to work closely with a buyer to successfully navigate competitive auction processes, as well as our expertise in the DACH region.

-PlusServer was established in 2015 via a combination of three existing hosting businesses, namely PlusServer, the managed hosting division of Host Europe Group and Telefonica Online Services

-PlusServer is a leading pure play managed hosting and managed cloud infrastructure provider for corporate clients in Germany

-The company is headquartered in Cologne but has offices across Germany, employs over 300 employees and currently hosts over 4,000 corporate clients within its data centres

-BC Partners is a leading private equity firm, managing funds of €18 billion

-Established in 1986, BC Partners has played an active role in developing the European buy-out market for 30+ years

-Since inception, BC Partners has completed 95 investments in companies with a total enterprise value of €118 billion and is currently investing its tenth fund, which was raised in 2017 with total commitments of €7 billion

-GoDaddy had acquired PlusServer as part of the acquisition of the Host Europe Group and in line with GoDaddy’s strategy to focus the business on its core domain and web hosting business, wanted to sell PlusServer

-BC Partners will help PlusServer to continue its organic as well as inorganic growth strategy

-PlusServer will continue to develop its hybrid cloud capabilities under BC Partners’ ownership, benefitting from increased adoption of these services in DACH

-In addition, with the European managed hosting market being highly fragmented, the sector offered an excellent basis for continued, value accretive M&A

-Arma Partners was engaged by BC Partners to provide support, in particular with regards to buyer intelligence, diligence, deal tactics and the financing workstream

-Arma Partners supported BC Partners to unearth flaws in the business plan and to analyse the business model, resulting in a conservative, but competitive bid

-Arma Partners coordinated the whole financing workstream on behalf of BC Partners, in order to obtain the best terms at the best price

-Arma Partners successfully guided BC Partners through a competitive M&A process involving a number of strategic as well as financial bidders, designing tactics to maximise the speed of execution and provide certainty for the vendor

-This transaction further reinforces Arma Partners’ market leading sector expertise in the managed hosting and cloud infrastructure markets as well as our expertise in the DACH region

Back to deals