Unifiedpost Group, one of the leading European fintech companies has announced the acquisition of 21 Grams, BanqUP, and AKTI. With these acquisitions, the company intends to develop its one-stop-shop platform and expand its activities to 20 European countries.
Besides growth, Unifiedpost Group is eyeing a focused buy-and-build strategy. The company has announced the first wave of acquisitions soon after its recent funding round.
Hans Leybaert, CEO and founder of Unifiedpost Group, says, “Fully aligned with the thoughtful M&A-approach of Unifiedpost Group, I am convinced that with these acquisitions we set the right steps to further create a pan-European platform for documents, identity and payment services.”
Expands into the Nordics
Talking about the acquisitions, 21 Grams is headquartered in Stockholm and operates in Sweden, Finland, and Denmark. Post-acquisition of 21 Grams, Unifiedpost Group, gets the opportunity to expand into four countries. Notably, the company has been a leading provider of mission-critical outbound mailing solutions in the Nordics since 2004.
The company has extensive multi-channel digital and paper invoice delivery capabilities and offers integration with a slew of ERP solutions to the Nordics. Annually, 21 Grams is claimed to process over 80 million documents.
Approximately 70 staff are employed at 21 Grams, which will result in an FTE-growth of nearly 10 per cent for Unifiedpost Group. “21 Grams reported a proforma revenue of €77.6M in 2019, of which €21.6M was generated from their multi-channel delivery platform (gross margin 27 per cent), which is identical to the core documents revenue of Unifiedpost Group. A further €56.0M in revenue was generated from document and parcel logistics (gross margin 11 per cent). The planned EBITDA of 21 Grams for 2020 is stated at €4.6M,” says Unifiedpost Group in a press release.
By acquiring 21 Grams, Unifiedpost Group will be able to provide 21 Grams’ solutions in its one-stop-shop model. And, access the Nordic SME market with nearly 1.25 million SMEs. Regarding the terms of the acquisition, the company acquired 100 per cent share capital of 21 Grams. The valuation was based on a multiple of 7.5 x EBITDA of 2020. It will finance 7 per cent by share and 93 per cent by cash. The transaction will be completed in January 2021.
Growth in Poland
By acquiring Belgium-based BanqUP that operates in Poland, Unifiedpost Group will bring more open banking and data analytics capabilities to its SME customer base. With BanqUP’s capabilities, the Unifiedpost platform will have access to open banking ecosystems enabling analysis of combined banking and document data, which can be used for cash flow forecasting and other purposes. This will enable the group to cross-sell and up-sell payment and financing solutions.
The acquisition of BanqUP will be completed 50 per cent by cash and 50 per cent by shares. The valuation was based on a multiple of 7.5 x revenue of 2020. This deal will be completed during January 2021.
E-commerce solutions
Unifiedpost Group will acquire AKTI, which is a Belgium firm with annual revenue of €0.5M. The cloud company offers SMEs with e-commerce and commerce solutions such as invoice processing and order management. Unifiedpost Group will be able to bring these services to its large SME customer base.
By acquiring the company with 85 per cent shares and 15 per cent cash. The valuation was based on a multiple of 3.9 x revenue of 2020. The parties have expressed their intention to complete the transaction during January 2021.
About Unifiedpost Group
Founded in 2001, Unifiedpost Group aims to become the leading cloud-based platform for SME business services built on “Documents”, “Identity” and “Payments”. It claims to operate and develops a 100 per cent cloud-based platform for administrative and financial services that allows real-time and seamless connections between Unifiedpost’s customers, their suppliers, their customers and other parties along the financial value chain.
It has offices in 15 countries throughout Europe. It claims to have processed over 350 million documents in 2019, reaching over 400,000 SMEs and more than 250 Corporates across its platform today.
Listed on the regulated market of Euronext Brussels – symbol: UPG – Belgium-based Unifiedpost Group claims to have registered €69M in 2019 Pro-forma turnover. It also has over 750 employees throughout Europe.
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