Good morning Eurohubsters, Craig McGlashan here wishing you a very happy new year.
We’ve got plenty to tell you about as we kick off 2023, starting with a focus on infrastructure. One Equity Partners tells us about its plans for its new acquisition Amey, while EQT and Ardian make a couple of exits. Away from infrastructure, Nordic Capital gives us its outlook for the year ahead and we unwrap a deal by Jebsen Capital for a children’s bike company.
One Equity Partners will look at “all three components” of Amey when choosing add-on targets, Ante Kusurin, principal, told PE Hub Europe’s Nina Lindholm.
New York-headquartered OEP today announced the closing of its acquisition of Amey from Ferrovial for £400 million ($490 million; €464 million).
Amey, headquartered in London, is a contractor to the UK government and public sector. Its core markets are transport, infrastructure and government buildings. It offers services covering engineering and systems design, data science, analytics and digitalisation. The company had £1.3 billion in revenue and £43 million in EBITDA in 2021.
“Amey has three business units: transportation infrastructure, secure infrastructure and consulting,” Kusurin explained. “I would say transportation infrastructure and secure infrastructure would fall in industrials, consulting falls into technology. It’s a very nice fit with what we’ve done both in tech and industrials previously.”
Check out the full interview, which includes some of OEP’s plans for add-ons and crossborder expansion, here.
Beyond the hype. In the latest of our Q&As with leading dealmakers on the outlook for 2023 and the year just gone, Nina spoke to Kristoffer Melinder, managing partner at Nordic Capital Advisors.
It’s a great read – check it out here – but I was particularly interested in Melinder’s views on valuations.
“There has been a great deal of focus on the rerating of valuations and its impact on investment and exit activity,” he told Nina. “However, the rerating of valuations is not entirely a bad thing. We see it as a positive that some of the worst hype has gone out of the market, providing a better basis for fundamental analysis and valuation. In our view, the next 12 months – and the two to three years after that – will offer up exciting investment opportunities that favour those investors with a strong capital base and deep sector knowledge.”
Read the whole interview to find out more about Nordic Capital’s 2022 and its upcoming fund deployment.
On your bike. I’m sure many children woke up just over a week ago to find they had shiny new bicycles, but Jebsen Capital went a step further this morning. The firm has invested in woom, a bike brand for children based in Austria that sells in more than 30 countries, with a focus on German-speaking Europe and the US.
Woom has been in business since 2013 and has more than 200 employees. It is headquartered in Klosterneuburg, near Vienna, and also has regional headquarters in Austin, Texas. The firm says it differentiates from competitors by making its bikes “significantly lighter”, which in turn gives children “the confidence that makes cycling fun and crucial for safety”, according to a statement.
“With innovative products and unwavering commitment to excellence, woom puts children at the centre of everything the company does,” said Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly, CEO of Jebsen Group, in the statement.
Jebsen is now the second largest institutional shareholder in woom after Bregal Unternehmerkapital. It plans to aid’s woom’s expansion in Europe, the US and “in the future”, Asia.
“The Jebsen Capital team expects significant potential for premium children’s bikes in China,” the statement said.
Jebsen Capital is the growth equity investment business of Jebsen Group, which aims to invest in brands that bring new products, services and experiences to consumers in Greater China. The firm is headquartered in Hong Kong.
Water deal. Switching to exits, and EQT Infrastructure – via its III and IV funds – entered exclusive negotiations to sell 50 percent of its stake in Saur to a consortium of infrastructure fund manager DIF Capital Partners and Dutch pension fund service provider PGGM. DIF and PGGM will each acquire 25 percent of EQT’s shares.
Saur is a service provider for the global water sector. It works with thousands of municipalities to deliver drinking water and collect wastewater for more than 20 million people. It also has an industrial water division that provides water infrastructure to international companies. Saur is headquartered in Paris.
Since EQT bought the firm in 2018, Saur has launched a new organisational structure, completed 15 add-on acquisitions and expanded to Portugal and North America. EQT also helped develop the industrial water division.
Healthy deal. Sticking with infrastructure exits, Ardian sold 100 percent of HISI, a healthcare and infrastructure investment holding company, to the Ania 2 fund managed by F2i SGR.
Milan-based HISI manages around 900 beds in two hospitals in northern Italy: the New Legnano hospital in Lombardy and the Alba-Bra hospital in Piemont.
Check out our full coverage here.
That’s it from me – I’ll be back with you again tomorrow.
Cheers,
Craig
If you do not receive this within five minutes, please try to sign in again. If the problem persists, please email: 
