ALTERNATIVE FINANCING FORMS
FOR ENTREPRENEURS AND INVESTORS
News

Frank­furt am Main/ Ammer­buch — Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG (DBAG) invests in the vhf Group (vhf), a manu­fac­tu­rer of compu­ter-aided milling machi­nes for appli­ca­ti­ons in denti­stry and indus­try. DBAG acqui­res around one fifth of the shares in vhf camfac­ture AG, which will act as the Group’s holding company in the future. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the purchase price of the mino­rity inte­rest. The execu­tion of the parti­ci­pa­tion takes place at short notice and is not subject to any reser­va­tions. The aim of the invest­ment is to support the further inter­na­tio­nal growth of the company and to bring about capi­tal market readiness.

With its invest­ment in vhf, DBAG is ente­ring into a long-term commit­ment: DBAG finan­ces long-term invest­ments exclu­si­vely from its balance sheet, thus not inves­t­ing along­side a DBAG fund. The invest­ment hori­zon of a long-term invest­ment goes beyond the usual term of a private equity fund. The new invest­ment is the fourth long-term invest­ment in the portfolio.

vhf (www.vhf.de), based in Ammer­buch (Baden-Würt­tem­berg, Germany), deve­lops and manu­fac­tures compu­ter-control­led milling machi­nes that are mainly used by commer­cial dental labo­ra­to­ries and dentists in their own labo­ra­to­ries for the fabri­ca­tion of dental resto­ra­ti­ons. Another high-growth part of sales is gene­ra­ted with machi­nes for selec­ted appli­ca­ti­ons in indus­try. The complete control elec­tro­nics, the soft­ware as well as the milling tools are also deve­lo­ped and manu­fac­tu­red in the vhf group. The company bene­fits from the special system archi­tec­ture of its machi­nes: they can be combi­ned with all common appli­ances and third-party soft­ware used to fabri­cate dental resto­ra­ti­ons. On the market, they are conside­red parti­cu­larly relia­ble and are valued for their good price-perfor­mance ratio. More than 10,000 machi­nes in dental prac­ti­ces and prac­tice labo­ra­to­ries form a good basis for a growing tool and service business.

The company was foun­ded in 1988; the company foun­ders have been the sole share­hol­ders to date. Mean­while, vhf employs about 350 employees, most of them at the head­quar­ters in Ammer­buch as well as at the second German produc­tion site in Fürth (Bava­ria). There are sales offices in New York and Shang­hai. Last year, the group achie­ved sales of a good 46 million euros. Sales have grown signi­fi­cantly recently — an annual growth rate of a good 17 percent is on the cards for the years between 2018 and 2021. In addi­tion to the intro­duc­tion of a new gene­ra­tion of machi­nes, inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion also contri­bu­ted to this. In the mean­time, 40 percent of sales are gene­ra­ted outside Europe, prima­rily in the USA and China; in these two count­ries, spen­ding on dental treat­ment is growing parti­cu­larly stron­gly. Further custo­mers are to be acqui­red there.

“We are plea­sed that DBAG has once again been able to win the trust of the share­hol­ders of a family-owned company with a custom-fit equity solu­tion,” said Jannick Hune­cke, member of the DBAG Manage­ment Board on the occa­sion of the signing of the agree­ment. “We are now inves­t­ing in a company that serves a struc­tu­rally growing, hardly cycli­cal market with very high own value crea­tion and has shown in the past that it is growing very profi­ta­bly — this also makes the invest­ment very attrac­tive for DBAG, espe­ci­ally in the current environment.”

Frank Benzin­ger, one of the company’s foun­ders and Chair­man of the Board of vhf camfac­ture AG, empha­si­zes not only the finan­cial but also the substan­tive contri­bu­tion of DBAG: “With our new share­hol­der, we are well posi­tio­ned to achieve our growth targets and, in the process, to further deve­lop our company struc­tu­rally as well.”

Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG, a listed company, initia­tes closed-end private equity funds and invests — predo­mi­nantly along­side DBAG funds — in well-posi­tio­ned medium-sized compa­nies with poten­tial One focus for many years has been indus­try. An incre­asing share of equity invest­ments is accoun­ted for by compa­nies in the growth sectors of broad­band tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons, IT services/software and health­care. The long-term, value-enhan­cing entre­pre­neu­rial invest­ment approach makes DBAG a sought-after invest­ment part­ner. Assets mana­ged and advi­sed by the DBAG Group amount to 2.5 billion euros.

Subscribe newsletter

Here you can read about the latest transactions, IPOs, private equity deals and venture capital investments, who has raised a new fund, how Buy & Build activities are going.

Get in touch

Contact us!
fyb [at] fyb.de