Good morning Eurohubsters, Nina Lindholm here to finish off the week with Friday’s Dealflow.
I’m back to brighten up your Friday morning. As the week reaches its end, so does Blackstone’s bid for Italy’s Atlantia, but more on that later. We’ve seen a variety of deals this week, so let’s get right to it and take a look at some highlights.
Going in green. Renewable energy deals had a moment in the sun this week in the form of solar, hydropower and green energy services.
On Monday, CF Pathways announced it had secured an equity investment from private equity and infrastructure firm, Ara Partners. CF Pathways provides green energy and net-zero related services to over 5,000 large industrial customers across Europe and the UK. The company comprises CF Partners and Brook Green Supply and achieved €2.5 billion in revenues in 2021.
Houston, Texas-based Ara will aim to support London-headquartered CF’s development of its software and data capabilities and the growth of its energy transition product offering.
Moving to hydro, HitecVision announced it made an investment in Norwegian small-scale hydropower company Cadre, alongside Nordkraft.
Kristiansand-based Cadre will be developed into a larger owner, developer and buyer of hydropower plants. According to HitecVision, the small-scale hydropower industry in Norway is fragmented with many Norwegian landowners possessing large potential power resources but unable to finance, plan or implement development of their resources.
“The need for rapid development of more renewable power is obvious,” said Eirik Frantzen, CEO of Nordkraft. “Even Norway is experiencing a new era, with both an increase in power demand and extreme prices. This provides an important backdrop for Cadre’s growth plans in small-scale hydropower. For Nordkraft, this opportunity is unique. Together with Cadre, we can grow within operatorship.”
Nordkraft, based in Nordland and Troms, is a developer and operator of power plants. The company operates 45 hydropower plants in Norway.
Lastly for energy, on to a solar deal. On Wednesday, DIF Capital Partners announced it had acquired a majority stake in Stockholm-headquartered Alight, a developer of subsidy-free solar projects in the Nordics.
The agreement includes an investment of €150 million and a secondary buyout of several existing shareholders. Alight will use the capital raised to accelerate the buildout of its near-term pipeline of solar projects.
In October 2022, Alight announced the construction of Sweden’s largest co-located solar-plus-storage plant, to be completed in December, at a 12MW solar park in Linköping.
Running out of time. Moving away from energy deals to infrastructure, Blackstone and the Benetton family have secured 62.2% of Atlantia’s shares, according to Reuters. The deadline for the takeover bid ends today, on November 11. The Italian market watchdog cleared the buyout bid in early October.
The bid, valuing Atlantia at €58 billion euros, would be the largest take-private deal ever for a European-listed company.
Atlantia, headquartered in Rome, is a toll road and airport manager.
The Benetton family and New York-based Blackstone joined forces through investment vehicle Schema Alfa. The vehicle reached 43.504% of the shares targeted by the offer, according to Reuters. It needs to achieve a threshold of 90% for the offer to be valid.
Automatic. Moving on to a tech exit. Main Capital Partners announced the sale of marketing automation software firm artegic to United Marketing Technologies. Main made its initial investment in artegic in 2016.
Artegic was founded in 2005 and is headquartered in Bonn, Germany. It provides SaaS marketing automation products and digital CRM.
The exit was Main’s third this year. Main is a software investor in the Benelux, DACH and Nordics region. It is headquartered in the Hague and had over €2.2 billion of assets under management as of October 2021. The buyer, United Marketing Technologies, is headquartered in Hamburg and is 100 percent owned by the DuMont family-owned business.
“We congratulate artegic and United on this successful partnership,” said Sven van Berge Henegouwen, partner at Main Capital Partners. “The company has gone through an impressive business model transformation resulting in SaaS growth rates of more than 33 percent. We believe artegic has found with UNITED a strong partner to support artegic in the next phase of growth.”
To find out what artegic achieved under Main’s wing, take a look at the full report here.
Apposites attract. Let’s add in some healthcare. Apposite Capital portfolio firm Swanton Care and Community announced the acquisition of Freedom Care and Support.
Freedom offers supported living services to adults with disabilities, including learning difficulties. Its head office is in Burnley and most people it supports are based in the area.
Swanton provides care for people with autism and learning disabilities, among other services. It has facilities in England, Scotland and Wales and said that the addition of Freedom – its ninth acquisition – would help improve its hub model in the Burnley area.
Apposite Capital, headquartered in London, is a private equity firm that works exclusively in healthcare.
That’s it from me today. I hope you all have a great weekend – mine will include starting my fourth book of the month and some more running in the very autumnal weather. Craig McGlashan will write to you on Monday.
Cheers,
Nina
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