Deutsche Beteiligungs AG: Partial sale of Solvares to Five Arrows

Frank­furt am Main — Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG (DBAG) is selling a signi­fi­cant portion of its stake in Solva­res, a leading provi­der of soft­ware solu­ti­ons for resource and route plan­ning. Five Arrows joins as a part­ner to support the company on its further growth path. The shares in DBAG ECF III, which was advi­sed by DBAG, will also be parti­ally sold. With its invest­ment in Solva­res, DBAG ECF III has successfully arran­ged the succes­sion of the former foun­­der-mana­­ged company.

Proceeds from the sale slightly above the fair value of the invest­ment as at Decem­ber 31, 2023

DBAG is now reali­zing proceeds from the sale that are slightly higher than the fair value of the invest­ment in the preli­mi­nary conso­li­da­ted balance sheet as at 31 Decem­ber 2023. This results in a slightly posi­tive value contri­bu­tion from the tran­sac­tion in the current quar­ter. The further invest­ment will allow addi­tio­nal value to be gene­ra­ted from the future deve­lo­p­ment of the company: DBAG and DBAG ECF III conti­nue to see very good deve­lo­p­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties for Solva­res, which is now one of the largest Euro­pean plat­forms for resource opti­miza­tion, and will ther­e­fore retain a signi­fi­cant stake. The new share­hol­der, Five Arrows, brings valuable B2B soft­ware and indus­try exper­tise to support the expan­sion of Solva­res’ product port­fo­lio and inter­na­tio­nal expan­sion stra­tegy by acce­le­ra­ting orga­nic growth and acquisitions.

Second sale from the DBAG ECF III portfolio

With the sale of its stake, DBAG ECF III has achie­ved the second realiza­tion from its fund port­fo­lio. Since 2018, the fund has built up a port­fo­lio of three compa­nies. The sale of the invest­ment in BTV Multi­me­dia was the first MBO sale from the DBAG ECF III portfolio.

Dispo­sal under­lines DBAG’s progress in the IT Services and Soft­ware segment 

The successful sale also under­lines the good progress made by DBAG in the IT Services and Soft­ware segment. After buil­ding up exten­sive know-how and a strong network, seven invest­ments have now been made in this segment. The asso­cia­ted share of DBAG’s total port­fo­lio value has increased almost five­fold in the last three years from five to 24 percent (as of Decem­ber 31, 2023).

Leading provi­der of soft­ware solu­ti­ons for resource and route plan­ning in Europe

Solva­res offers its custo­mers indus­­try-leading soft­ware solu­ti­ons for plan­ning, control­ling and opti­mi­zing their field service, distri­bu­tion and trans­port logi­stics. Solva­res’ solu­tion plat­form is at the center of resource and mobi­lity manage­ment and supports over 3,000 custo­mers in 45 count­ries in solving complex use cases through proprie­tary algo­rithms and best-of-breed tech­no­lo­gies. This achie­ves tangi­ble effi­ci­ency gains for field service orga­niza­ti­ons and at the same time signi­fi­cantly redu­ces resource consump­tion and CO2 emis­si­ons. With a clear stra­te­gic focus and far-reaching invest­ments, Solva­res has succee­ded in trans­forming itself from a tradi­tio­nal license busi­ness into a powerful SaaS solu­tion provi­der. Turno­ver has increased almost five­fold in the last five years. Acqui­si­ti­ons also contri­bu­ted to the average double-digit orga­nic growth. The targe­ted acqui­si­tion of a total of five compa­nies enab­led further expan­sion in the field sales manage­ment area and comple­men­ted the product port­fo­lio with logi­stics and mobile func­tions. Finally, the inte­gra­tion of a former UK sales part­ner helped with internationalization.

“The high growth dyna­mics of the market coupled with invest­ments in soft­ware code and targe­ted inter­na­tio­nal company acqui­si­ti­ons have made a signi­fi­cant contri­bu­tion to forming a Euro­pean market leader,” comm­ents Tom Alzin, Spokes­man of the Manage­ment Board of Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG (photo © DBAG), on the partial sale. He added: “Our decis­ion to focus more on digi­tal busi­ness models is incre­asingly paying off — to the bene­fit of inves­tors in DBAG’s shares and funds.”

Ivan Baga­ric, Chief Execu­tive Offi­cer of Solva­resadds: “Our solu­ti­ons deli­ver signi­fi­cant added value to our custo­mers on a daily basis. Our busi­ness has deve­lo­ped stron­gly in recent years and I look forward to conti­nuing our growth plan in the coming years and deve­lo­ping Solva­res into the Euro­pean market leader for field manage­ment and logi­stics soft­ware. Five Arrows, with its exten­sive global expe­ri­ence in scaling B2B soft­ware busi­nesses and long-term invest­ment perspec­tive, is our part­ner of choice to support us in this next phase of our jour­ney. We are grateful for DBAG’s support to date and are deligh­ted that they will remain our inves­tors along­side Five Arrows.”

About DBAG

Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG (DBAG), listed on the stock exch­ange since 1985, is one of Germany’s most renow­ned private equity compa­nies. As an inves­tor and fund advi­sor, DBAG’s invest­ment focus has tradi­tio­nally been on medium-sized compa­nies with a focus on well-posi­­tio­­ned compa­nies with deve­lo­p­ment poten­tial, prima­rily in the DACH region. The indus­try focus is on manu­fac­tu­ring compa­nies, indus­trial service provi­ders and Indus­try­Tech compa­nies — i.e. compa­nies whose products enable auto­ma­tion, robo­tics and digi­tiza­tion — as well as compa­nies from the broad­band tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons, IT services, soft­ware and health­care sectors. Since 2020, DBAG has also been repre­sen­ted in Italy with its own office in Milan. Assets mana­ged or advi­sed by the DBAG Group amount to appro­xi­m­ately 2.6 billion euros. As part of its stra­te­gic part­ner­ship with ELF Capi­tal Group, DBAG is adding private debt capi­tal to its range of flexi­ble finan­cing solu­ti­ons for SMEs.