Sunday, December 15, 2024

CVC Offers to Take CompuGroup Private in $1.2 Billion Deal

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(Bloomberg) — CVC Capital Partners Plc offered to take CompuGroup Medical SE & Co. KGaA private in a deal that values the German software provider at €1.18 billion ($1.2 billion).

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CVC has offered €22 a share in cash for the German technology company, which makes software serving the health-care industry, it said in a statement on Monday, confirming an earlier Bloomberg News report.

CVC has been ramping up deals after raising €26 billion last year for the world’s biggest-ever buyout fund — a sharp contrast to peers that had to delay fundraising or adjust expectations. The firm deployed €13.4 billion this year through June, it said in its first set of financial results since the initial public offering.

CompuGroup issued a profit warning and changed its chief executive officer in July, forecasting a drop in operating profit amid challenges for its units serving doctors and hospitals that sent shares tumbling. The stock had declined 57% this year through Friday.

The shares jumped 31% to €21.54 at 9:42 a.m. in Frankfurt trading on Monday. CompuGroup had closed at €16.35 in Frankfurt on Friday.

Frank Gotthardt, a computer science student, created CompuGroup in 1987 and listed it in 2007. He and his dentist wife, Brigitte Gotthardt, and their doctor son, Daniel Gotthardt, as well as a related shareholder, Reinhard Koop, own a majority. The shareholder group around CompuGroup’s founding Gotthardt family plans to retain its roughly 50.1% interest in the company.

The firm named Daniel Gotthardt as CEO this year after the company mutually agreed to terminate Michael Rauch’s contract early.

The company provides Ambulatory Information Systems, or software for doctors’ offices, as well as IT for hospitals and pharmacies. CompuGroup had annual revenue of about €1.19 billion in 2023 with products in 60 countries and more than 8,700 employees in 19 countries, according to a fact sheet.

Analysts at Hauck & Aufhaeuser this month started coverage of CompuGroup with a sell rating, saying the software company is “structurally losing its edge” in its biggest division AIS, which has been ceding market share in its core Germany market for more than 10 years.

(Updates with CVC launching the takeover offer throughout.)

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