March 2019, Frankfurt am Main – Beyond Capital Partners GmbH (“Beyond Capital”) advised Beyond Capital Partners Fund I on the disposal of its portfolio company EBERTLANG Distribution GmbH (“EBERTLANG”) together with the founders to HQ Equita, the direct investment company of HQ Capital. The parties agreed confidentiality about the purchase price.
EBERTLANG is the central interface between small- and medium-size companies and leading software vendors. The company offers these vendors access to the highly fragmented German-speaking market, with more than 17,000 IT-system houses, and provides both software distribution as well as product and channel management, marketing, training and technical support. EBERTLANG guides system houses in executing managed services and SaaS concepts for their end customers. EBERTLANG uses its industry-leading business intelligence database and personalized customer care throughout the process.
Since the acquisition of EBERTLANG in May 2017, Beyond Capital developed the company together with its founders towards a new growth path and as a result, achieved significant increase of sales and revenue of the firm. From this level, EBERTLANG together with its new shareholder HQ Equita, will use the opportunity to further follow the organic growth path as well as the expansion through add-on acquisitions.
“EBERTLANG is a success story and has furthermore enormous potential. We are pleased to have actively accompanied the company and its founders during this important phase of growth. With HQ Equita, the company will have a financially strong, stable and reliable partner for its future growth. Since the founders remain as shareholding managing directors in the company, a high level of continuity is guaranteed,” says Christoph D. Kauter, Managing Partner and founder of Beyond Capital Partners.
“EBERTLANG is the ideal partner for small- and mid-sized companies to maintain their IT-infrastructure for the future and fulfilling ever-increasing regulatory requirements, such as legally compliant archiving of emails. EBERTLANG is optimally positioned and set up for megatrends including digitization, IT-security, cloud services and regulatory compliance. We are delighted to enter the next phase of EBERTLANG’s development, working together with the strong team that founders Steffen Ebert and Volker Lang have built,” explained Florian Wiemken, Partner at HQ Equita.
“With the support of HQ Equita, we plan to drive our already-strong growth even higher. In addition to expanding our solutions portfolio in the software area, we plan to significantly strengthen our service offerings – which IT professionals in the German-speaking countries already value – in order to offer even better support to system houses in all matters relating to sophisticated infrastructure,” explained Steffen Ebert, founder and Co-CEO of EBERTLANG. “Besides expanding our offerings, with help from HQ Equita we will also advance our upcoming national and international expansion – also through acquisitions,” added Volker Lang, second founder and Co-CEO. Discussions with potential acquisition targets have already been started.
Beyond Capital Partners was supported in the transaction by Lincoln International (M&A), Latham & Watkins (law) and EY (financials). The management of EBERTLANG was advised by CMS (law).HQ Equita was supported in the transaction by goetzpartners (M&A, commercial due diligence, debt advisory), Alvarez & Marsal (financial due diligence) and Watson Farley & Williams (law and taxes).
About HQ Capital
HQ Capital is a global alternative asset manager that has been investing in private equity and U.S. real estate on behalf of institutions and family offices since 1989. With approximately $12 billion in assets under management and more than 145 employees across 10 offices worldwide, HQ Capital has the platform and experience needed to effectively allocate capital in private markets. HQ Equita is HQ Capital’s private equity direct investment arm. HQ Equita has developed into an established and trusted partner for middle-market companies, with approximately $1 billion of capital invested in over 30 small- and medium-sized enterprises in the German-speaking DACH region since 1992.
www.hqequita.com
About EBERTLANG
EBERTLANG is the leading value-added distributor of infrastructure software for small and mid-sized companies in German-speaking Europe. Founded in 1995 and based in Wetzlar, Germany, the company’s approximately 60 employees provide leading software solutions and services in the areas of email archiving, back-up, IT-security, automation and IT-failover to a network of around 17,000 partners.
www.ebertlang.com
About Beyond Capital Partners
Beyond Capital Partners is a holding company focused on acquiring majority interests in profitable mid-sized enterprises in German-speaking Europe (Germany, Austria, Switzerland). With its portfolio companies LDBS Lichtdienst, Larsen Indoor Light Concept, Heitronic, sysob IT and BigCityBeats, Beyond Capital Partners currently holds interests in five businesses in the areas of lighting services, IT security and lifestyle & entertainment.
www.beyondcapital-partners.com
