After being approached by several industrialists, the Paris-based Cap Data Consulting has finally sold. The database consulting and expertise company (Oracle, SQL Server, Sybase), which was founded ten years ago and employs around forty people, has joined the generalist IT services company Osmozium at the end of a competitive process organised by Pax Corporate Finance. The buyer, based in Versailles, is paying €3.5 million, or 85% of 2011 turnover, a good valuation for an IT consulting company – which has an operating profit of 12% -, which will be supplemented depending on future performance.
The transaction is financed solely by a loan from Neufize OBC, to acquire the entire capital of the target company, which has around 40 employees. Since its creation in 2002 by Franck Melcare and Yves Moulin, both of whom had previously worked for the software publisher Sybase, which was acquired last year by the German company SAP, the consulting firm had never before opened up its capital.
More than €10m in cumulative revenues
“Cap Data Consulting was at a crossroads. Either this structure, of intermediate size, was embarking on major investments to pass a milestone, or it was joining a more powerful group,” explains Adrien Tourres, associate director of Pax Corporate Finance. If they sell their shares, the two founders will remain involved in the consulting company, which is itself advised by Eggers Conseil, which expects its turnover to grow by 15% in 2012, to €4.7m. They are joining an IT services company, led by the trio of Lorenza Mallez Barone, Eric Petitbon and Guillaume Rouget, which is twice as large – 80 employees and 30 subcontractors – and which has grown by an average of 66% since its creation. It generated €6.4m in turnover at the end of 2010, with an operating profit of almost 11%.
