Munich-based Siemens AG is an engineering and electronics company that specialises in the fields of industry, energy, transportation, and healthcare. In a recent development, Siemens Mobility (a separately managed company of Siemens AG) has announced the acquisition of Netherlands-based Sqills, a SaaS provider for inventory management, reservation, and ticketing software.
The agreed purchase price is €550M plus an earn out. The acquisition is expected to be earnings per share (EPS) accretive pre-PPA (Purchase Price Allocation) in the second year after closing. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of fiscal year 2022.
Sqills will be managed as a separate legal entity and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Siemens Mobility.
What does Sqills offer?
Sqills was founded in 2002 by Alexander Mul, Bart van Munster, Johan Nieuwerth, and Wouter Cassee. The company provides inventory, sales, and distribution software service for the public transport industry. Sqills says that it’s software solutions are focused on reducing cost, increasing revenue, and improving customer satisfaction for Public Transport Operators.
The company has developed “S3 Passenger” – a scalable platform that enables rail and bus operators to replace their legacy reservation systems with an online booking system – this helps increase the utilisation and availability of passenger transportation.
Currently, Sqills employs 160 people and forecasts revenue for calendar year 2022 of around €40M. With 33 operators across 9 countries, the company aims to quickly become the provider of choice to leading transport operators such as SNCF, Irish Rail, Rail Delivery Group, SJ, Via Rail, and Eurostar.
On joining Siemens Mobility, Bart van Munster, co-founder of Sqills, says, “Joining Siemens Mobility is a tremendous opportunity that allows Sqills to advance its plans to expand beyond Europe into Asia Pacific and the Americas as well as its ongoing investment in team, product and existing long term operator partnerships. Together with Siemens Mobility, we’ll be even better equipped to drive the mobility software business and optimisation of rail and bus travel on a global scale with local representation.”
Aim of this acquisition
Sqills’ “S3 Passenger” technology adds digital solutions to Siemens Mobility’s software portfolio as well as boosts its ability to provide the products & services to increase the overall usage and convenience of public transportation.
Michael Peter, CEO of Siemens Mobility, explains, “To significantly increase passengers on the rails and reach climate targets by 2030, we need to provide passengers with a more optimised process that allows them to seamlessly identify and utilise all offered train services. Hence, the acquisition of Sqills and it’s easy to implement SaaS inventory, reservation, and ticketing platform gives us the ability to achieve exactly that.”
Peter adds, “Furthermore, combining the Sqills booking platform and the Hacon solutions will provide a comprehensive offering for operators to manage their key travel processes, including trip searching and yield management.”
Hacon provides software solutions for public transportation, mobility, and logistics. The company has three business units, HAFAS, TPS, and Consulting and provides services from trip planning to mobile ticketing and fleet management. Since 2017, Hacon has been a member of the Siemens family.
With acquisitions of Hacon, eos.uptrade, Bytemark, and Padam Mobility, Sqills’ S3 Passenger will now become part of an interconnected software portfolio to provide various services for public transport together. Additionally, with Hacon’s trip planning and MaaS software, Siemens Mobility can now provide operators with an enhanced SaaS offering to manage their core processes.
About Siemens Mobility
Siemens Mobility has been providing transport solutions for more than 160 years. The company says it looks to constantly innovate its portfolio in its core areas of rolling stock, rail automation and electrification, turnkey systems, intelligent traffic systems as well as related services.
With digitalisation, Siemens Mobility is enabling mobility operators to make infrastructure intelligent, increase value sustainably over the entire lifecycle, enhance passenger experience, and guarantee availability.
In fiscal year 2020, the company posted revenue of €9.1B and had around 38,500 employees worldwide.