(News Bulletin 247) – The Private Equity fund Advent is in negotiations to sell Idemia according to Les Echos.
The fund would have mandated Rothschild and Goldman Sachs for this sale according to the daily. The sale amount could be between 5 billion euros and 6 billion euros, i.e. 9x to 11x 2022 EBITDA.
‘ An a priori low multiple for this type of asset which would be explained by the very strong rebound in Idemia’s results in 2022 (+25%), as well as by the valuation of payment activities (bank cards) lower than that biometrics business’ says Invest Securities.
According to Les Echos, several Private Equity funds would be interested in this acquisition, including Apollo, Veritas, Brookfield and CVC, as well as industrial groups such as NEC, Assa Abloy and HID Global. Thales would also be interested in this operation, ‘but the group would face competition problems after having acquired Gemalto at the end of 2017 and would not wish to acquire the Payment activities of Idemia’ indicates Invest Securities.
‘ As a reminder, Advent had acquired Oberthur in 2011 for 1.15 billion euros and Morpho for 2.4 billion euros in 2016 (Idemia is the structure born of the merger between Oberthur and the security activities of Safran: Morpho). Faced with a banking environment under pressure, Advent would have obtained from Goldman Sachs an acquirer financing of 2.5 billion Euros’ adds the analysis office.
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