(News Bulletin 247) – Following a public purchase offer, the new shareholder of the company specializing in the digital transformation of SMEs holds more than 90% of the capital and will thus implement a compulsory delisting.

The end of the stock market for Visiativ. The company providing digital services and software solutions for small and medium-sized enterprises (VSEs, SMEs and ETIs represent 88% of its revenues) was listed on the Paris Stock Exchange in 2014.

At the time, the revenues of this company founded in 1987 were close to 50 million euros. The turnover has since increased more than fivefold, to 277 million euros in 2023. The stock price has had a turbulent journey, especially in recent years. But, at 27 euros, the share price still showed an increase of 152% at the beginning of February compared to its IPO price in 2014.

On February 9, Visiativ’s reference shareholder, Alliativ, the company of co-founder and CEO Laurent Fiard, announced its acquisition by the SNEF group, a French engineering and design company that wanted to strengthen its digital division.

This operation led the SNEF group to indirectly regain control of Visiativ, since Alliativ holds more than 40% of its capital.

A rating release soon

This change of control has thus led to a mandatory public purchase offer (OPA) on Visiativ, launched last month at a price of 37 euros per share. That is the same price as that on which the acquisition of Alliativ by the SNEF group was based.

This Tuesday, Visiativ announced that the Financial Markets Authority (AMF) had published the final results of this takeover bid. Following this operation, the SNEF group indirectly holds, via Alliativ, 95% of the capital and 92% of the voting rights of Visiativ. This is more than the 90% required to take a company off the stock market.

As a result, a request for a delisting procedure will soon be “formulated”, indicated Visiativ, which will therefore shortly leave the Paris Stock Exchange, ten years after joining it.

In February, Invest Securities said it was “surprised” by this transaction, because it seemed that Visiativ’s management still wanted to keep a free hand “for a long time” after the presentation of the latest strategic plan. Invest Securities judged that the management was “perhaps disappointed by Visiativ’s stock market valuation”.

A Parisian coast that is drying up

Visiativ joins several mid-sized companies that have recently left the Paris Stock Exchange or are preparing to leave it following a takeover bid.

In the same sector as Visiativ, the company SII said goodbye to the Parisian market in March, after the public offering of its founding family.

The renewable energy producer Neoen is expected to leave the stock market in early 2025, the date on which the takeover bid by the Canadian fund Brookfield is scheduled to close.

For its part, the in vitro diagnostics specialist Eurobio Sicentific announced at the beginning of the month that funds allied to its management had decided to form a concert and launch a takeover bid with a view to delisting. The company had then invoked an observation made by other companies, namely that the Stock Exchange did not fully satisfy its managers, not providing the company with “the flexibility theoretically offered for its financing”.

Delistings have tended to accelerate in recent years, while IPOs have become rarer. According to the EY firm, 31 companies left the Parisian listing in 2023, after 25 in 2022. For their part, IPOs were registered at only six in 2023, after eleven in 2022. Which logically results in a Parisian listing that is becoming thinner.