HgCapital invests in Combell – Hg, the manager of HgCapital Trust plc, has agreed to invest in Combell Group, a leader in mass hosting services for SMEs across Europe. The transaction is subject to regulatory approval and so will close in the New Year. The terms of the investment are not disclosed.
HgCapital Trust plc will invest approximately GBP22.1 million in Combell, with other institutional clients of Hg investing alongside the Company through the Hg8 Fund.
Based on the 30 November 2018 NAV, liquid resources available for future deployment, including all announced transactions, are estimated to be GBP134 million (18% of the 30 November NAV of GBP764.4 million). In addition, the company has access to an GBP80 million standby facility, which is currently undrawn. The investment will reduce the outstanding commitments to invest in Hg transactions over the next four to five years to approximately GBP447 million.
Established in 1999, Combell is a leading mass hosting player in Belgium and Denmark, and has growing positions in the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland. Combell has over 800,000 SME and SoHo (which stands for ‘small office, home office’ apparently) customers and is a one-stop partner for web hosting, domains, e-commerce and application solutions.
Nick Jordan, partner, and Joris Van Gool, director at Hg said: “We have been very impressed with what the team at Combell have built over the past 19 years in the Benelux and the Nordics. It’s a privilege to invest alongside CEO Jonas Dhaenens and the entire management team. We have been following Combell for a long time and believe that the business is strongly positioned to continue growing organically while adding selective M&A on its platform. We look forward to partnering with the Combell team as the business continues to expand across Europe.”
Jonas Dhaenens, founder & CEO of Combell Group said: “I am excited about the opportunity to partner with Hg in the next phase of Combell’s growth and development. We look forward to working with Nick Jordan and the rest of the Hg team to grow a true industry champion. I would like to sincerely thank and congratulate Waterland for their tremendous support throughout the last 5 years; this incredibly successful ride would simply have been impossible without their unrelenting strategic guidance, operational support and buy & build execution power.”
HGT : HgCapital invests in Combell