Oakley Capital makes Idealista purchase – Oakley Capital says its Oakley Capital Fund IV has agreed to make a minority investment in idealista, a leading online real estate classifieds platform in southern Europe (Spain, Italy, and Portugal). Fund IV will invest €175m alongside the management team of idealista and EQT, who will remain the majority shareholders in the company. Oakley Capital Investments share of this will be about £43m (indirectly through Fund IV). After the deal, it will have about £179m in liquid rsources.
Oakley has an in-depth understanding of idealista from Oakley Capital Private Equity Fund III’s successful sale of Casa.it to EQT in September 2020, which was subsequently combined with idealista’s Italian operations. That deal provided a lot of synergies, strengthened idealista’s competitive positioning in Italy and was complementary to idealista’s market leading position in Spain and Portugal.
Founded in 2000 and headquartered in Madrid, Spain, idealista supports approximately 40,000 real estate agents and 38 million unique monthly visitors across southern Europe by providing an online real estate classifieds marketplace for home buyers and sellers. Idealista’s online platform and diversified portfolio of digital services, such as customer relationship manager tools, data analytics, and online mortgage brokerage, help facilitate efficient real estate transactions, making it a key destination for prospective homeowners and sellers in Spain, Italy, and Portugal.
idealista’s underlying market is supported by favourable trends, such as the increasing penetration of the online classifieds market in Italy, Spain and Portugal as they mature in line with more developed global classifieds markets; the shift from offline to online marketing spend by real estate agents; and the significant network effects driven by the platform’s strong brand recognition.
[idealista was a holding in Apax managed funds until September 2020, when they sold to EQT IX in a €1.3bn transaction. Undex Apax, which invested in 2015, the business grew its web traffic by 4x. This deal seems to represent EQT taking a little money off the table, we cannot tell if it is selling the stake on at a profit or not.]
OCI : Oakley Capital makes Idealista purchase