Category: Deals

CFNEWS article by Jean-Philippe Mas, published on March 17, 2022, at 10:51 a.m.

EMP Rotomoulage plans to increase its production capacity through a new shareholder restructuring. In 2018, the manufacturer of rotomolded plastic components appointed William Digne as its new CEO, succeeding the founder’s two sons, Cyril and Samuel Delamaire. The MBI brought several financial investors on board, including lead investor Amundi PEF, NCI, Unexo, and BNP Paribas Développement, which collectively acquired a majority stake.
Nearly four years later, G2 Invest, the CEO’s long-standing financial advisor, organized a competitive bidding process involving a select group of financial investors. Altur Investissement emerged as the winner and became the company’s new reference minority shareholder. The listed investment firm invested at the upper end of its €1 million to €5 million target range.
The transaction also enables William Digne to increase his stake and become the majority shareholder. The investor pool is rounded out by existing shareholders BNP Paribas Développement and Unexo, which are reinvesting part of their sale proceeds.
The senior debt financing the transaction is being provided by the company’s long-standing banking partners, LCL, CIC Ouest, and Crédit Agricole Ille-et-Vilaine, acting as arrangers, with BNP Paribas and Banque Populaire Grand Ouest also participating.

A new facility in the coming months

Based in Dol-de-Bretagne, in the Ille-et-Vilaine department, and employing around 70 people, EMP Rotomoulage specializes in the development and production of custom rotomolded components. The company manufactures more than 130,000 parts a year, processing over 2,300 tonnes of polyethylene. Its products, which are 100% recyclable, are supplied to the agri-food, landscaping, containment, and environmental sectors.
Last year, the Breton company generated €15 million in sales, compared with €12 million when Amundi PEF, NCI, Unexo, and BNP Paribas Développement invested. “Our investment thesis is primarily based on the proven ability of William Digne and the entire team to grow the business. To that end, the ongoing expansion of EMP Rotomoulage’s production capacity will enable the company to grow its business with existing customers while also strengthening its sales force,” explains Bertrand Cavalié, Investment Director at Altur Investissement.

Read the article in Les Echos by Charlie Perreau, published on March 15, 2022, at 3:56 p.m.

Consolidation is underway in the second-hand fashion market. At the end of 2020, Vinted acquired its Dutch competitor United Wardrobe to strengthen its presence in Europe. In 2021, Etsy acquired UK-based Depop for $1.6 billion, while luxury marketplace Farfetch acquired Luxclusif. Now it is the turn of French unicorn Vestiaire Collective to acquire its US counterpart, Tradesy, for an undisclosed amount.

This is the first acquisition for the French second-hand fashion platform. Founded in 2009, the same year as Vestiaire Collective, Tradesy operates on the same model as the French unicorn. “When people ask me to define Tradesy, I always say that it’s the American Vestiaire Collective,” explains Tracy DiNunzio, the founder and CEO of the US company. Over the past thirteen years, Tradesy has attracted 7 million members, all in the United States.

The United States, the No. 1 Market

Unlike Vestiaire Collective — which has offices across Europe, Asia, and the United States and customers in more than 80 countries — Tradesy has never expanded beyond its home market. The deal will therefore enable its members to sell their items worldwide, while giving buyers access to products from outside the United States. “Our US customers love European fashion,” says Tracy DiNunzio. Vestiaire Collective’s item authentication technology will also be integrated into Tradesy.
For the French company, which raised €356 million in 2021, the acquisition is part of its strategy to expand in the United States. The country is the unicorn’s largest market and the one that has posted the strongest growth, up 75% in one year.

A New Authentication Center

Combined, the two platforms have 23 million members and more than $1 billion in transaction volume. By comparison, Vinted generates more than $2.75 billion in gross merchandise volume (GMV), according to a recent report by Cross-Border Commerce Europe. However, the Lithuanian start-up is more focused on the mid- and lower-end segments, while Vestiaire primarily targets the luxury and mid-range markets, with brands such as Sézane, Maje, and Sandro.

Tracy DiNunzio will oversee all US operations. The US teams at Vestiaire Collective (25 employees) and Tradesy (140 employees) will gradually be merged. “We will assess each other’s strengths and identify synergies,” says Maximilian Bittner, CEO of Vestiaire Collective. A new authentication center will open in the Los Angeles area, becoming the French company’s second in the United States, after New York, and its fifth worldwide.

According to Bain, the luxury resale market was worth $37 billion at the end of 2021. An increasingly attractive market for brands and brick-and-mortar retailers, which are gradually launching their own second-hand offerings, including Sandro, Galeries Lafayette, and Printemps in France.

Charlie Perreau @CharliePERREAU

Read the press release by clicking here.

Following a very strong 2021, Pharmacorp, France’s leading traditional community pharmacy network (400 member pharmacies and €600 million in revenue), has announced a partnership with Hygie31, a company specializing in advising and supporting healthcare and wellness brands (250 member pharmacies, 50 optical stores, 17 medical equipment stores, two online parapharmacy websites, and €1 billion in revenue in 2021).
This strategic partnership between the two Toulouse-based companies will see Hygie31 acquire a stake in Gener’+, Pharmacorp’s purchasing and supplier-referencing organization.
The partnership has a clear ambition: to create a leading French healthcare group with the scale and influence to make an impact on the French pharmacy market.

According to Laurent Filoche, President of Pharmacorp:

“I am delighted to see Pharmacorp enter this new phase and to see the opportunities this partnership with Hygie31 will create.
Thanks to its expertise, we will be able to develop new products and services tailored to both our existing and future pharmacies, particularly by strengthening our medical equipment offering. This is an essential service for our patients in suburban and rural areas, as well as an additional growth driver for our members.
We also aim to leverage Hygie31’s expertise to help young pharmacists establish themselves, through the introduction of financial support mechanisms for new pharmacy owners.
Finally, we also see this partnership as an opportunity to further consolidate our purchasing power and strengthen our position within the healthcare sector.
However, this partnership will in no way compromise our independence or the values we stand for. Pharmacorp will remain an organization of independent pharmacists, owned by and serving its members. I will remain President of Pharmacorp and continue to advocate for the profession through my role as President of the UDGPO trade association.»

According to Hervé Jouves, President of Hygie31:

« From the outset, we have been committed to developing a truly integrated healthcare ecosystem and becoming a leading player in the healthcare and wellness sector, particularly in the community pharmacy market. We have therefore developed a range of brands and e-commerce platforms covering parapharmacy, optical care, and medical equipment — all of which complement a pharmacy’s core business — while remaining open to external growth opportunities that would further strengthen our position.
2021 was an exceptionally strong year for Hygie31’s pharmacies and partners, with the group closing the year with revenue of more than €1 billion. This demonstrates the relevance of our concepts and the quality of the support we provide.
Through this partnership with Pharmacorp, we will be able to combine our respective strengths and enable each pharmacy owner to find the business model that best suits their needs, with tailored support regardless of their location — whether rural, suburban, urban, or neighborhood-based.
We will also strengthen our relationships with pharmaceutical laboratories and continue to improve the commercial terms available to our members, while generating genuine efficiencies for our laboratory partners. »

About Pharmacorp

Founded in 2012 from a pharmacy network in Ariège that had been operating for more than 40 years, Pharmacorp now represents 400 independent pharmacists across France.
With a strong presence in suburban and rural areas, the group supports its members through numerous partnerships with the pharmaceutical industry, helping them improve their healthcare offering from both an economic and quality perspective.
In 2021, after welcoming 100 new members, Pharmacorp reported revenue of €600 million, up 32% compared with 2020.

About Hygie31

A specialist in the healthcare and wellness sector, Hygie31 is the holding company of Laf Santé, the company operating the Pharmacie Lafayette, Parapharmacie Lafayette, Optique Lafayette, and Médical Lafayette networks, established in 2014, as well as dhygietal, a subsidiary founded in 2021 dedicated to digital activities through cocooncenter.com and parapharmacielafayette.com.
Backed by investment fund Five Arrows Principal Investments, Hygie31 reported €1 billion in sales, representing 27% growth compared with 2020.

Press Office – Vie publique – Nathalie Cassagnes – +33 6 11 49 38 02 – contact@agenceviepublique.com

CFNEWS article — by Baptiste Rubat du Mérac, published on March 7, 2022, at 1:46 p.m.

The online art logistics service, backed by Global Founders and Acton Capital, adds Swiss-based Forestay Capital, Spanish fund Mundi Ventures, and the EIF to its shareholder base in a €30 million Series B.

Convelio continues to rely on European investors. Two years after raising €9 million from German investors Global Founders Capital (GFC) and Acton Capital, the online art logistics service has raised €30 million from three non-French European funds.
Forestay Capital, the Swiss fund founded by Ernesto Bertarelli, whose father founded Italian biotech company Serono, which was sold to Merck for €6.9 billion in 2007, is leading the Series B. It is joined by Spanish VC firm Mundi Ventures and the European Investment Fund (EIF), which is investing through a special-purpose vehicle managed by GFC.
While Mundi Ventures has a strong focus on insurance and is active in France through investments in +Simple, Descartes, DreamQuark, and Unkle, its French-Spanish general partner, Javier Santiso, is very familiar with the art world.
Existing investors GFC and Acton Capital are also participating in the round, while several business angels are exiting through a separate transaction not included in the €30 million financing.
The two founders, Swiss Édouard Gouin and Clément Ouizille, had received two offers from US venture capital firms and two from European investors.
The start-up’s precise post-money valuation has not been disclosed, but according to our sources, it exceeds €150 million.

Revenue multiplied sixfold in two years

Over the past two years, Convelio’s monthly revenue, which the company keeps confidential, has increased sixfold, while its workforce has grown from 40 to 200 employees. The freight forwarding company serves 2,700 clients, including 40% art galleries, as well as auction houses such as Christie’s and Sotheby’s and online marketplaces. This latter category has benefited particularly from the e-commerce boom over the past two years, with platforms such as 1stDibs among its customers.
Convelio delivers their customers’ goods to 80 countries.
“The idea behind this fundraising is to seize the opportunity to continue gaining market share. It gives us the resources to finance our growth for the next two years. If our calculations are correct, we could reach profitability by then,” says Édouard Gouin.

Strengthening the New York office

A major effort will be made in the United States, with plans to hire 45 people this year at its New York office, which opened a year and a half ago following an initial expansion into London. The US accounts for 71% of Convelio’s deliveries and 20% of its shipments, and therefore of its revenue.
Another major potential market, Asia will be tackled at a later stage, once the company has decided how to approach it and whether opening an office there is necessary.
The young company remains focused on transporting works of art, antiques, and design pieces. The transportation of high-value industrial goods, which it handles only occasionally, is not yet an active target market.
Its competitive landscape has expanded with the launch of ThePackengers by French logistics company ESI in early 2020, adding to more established players such as US-based Arta, which operates with a marketplace approach, as well as long-standing players with less “digital” business models, such as André Chenue and LP Art.

Read the article on CFNEWS by R.L., published on February 15, 2022, at 8:32 a.m.

InterCloud has made Europe its playing field, as it set out to do when it raised €22 million in 2019 (see below). The Paris-based connectivity solutions provider now has a presence in Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Germany, Scandinavia, Belgium, and the United Kingdom.
It is in fact a London-based growth fund, Aleph Capital Partners, that is leading the company’s latest financing round, a €100 million Series D for the French SME. The investment firm was founded in 2013 by Frenchman Hugues Lepic, a former member of Goldman Sachs’ merchant banking division, and has previously backed a telecom infrastructure player, namely Interoute, which was acquired by GTT in 2018.
The round is also backed by two existing French investors, Ventech and Open CNP, which first invested in 2017 and 2019, respectively.

Partial exits by existing investors

While the transaction strengthens the company’s financial resources, InterCloud still had sufficient cash on hand. However, the company decided to seize an opportunity.
“For several years, InterCloud had been educating the market about the need for this type of segment,” explains Joy Sioufi, partner at GP Bullhound, which was once again appointed by InterCloud’s management team, including Jérôme Dilouya. “But they began gaining momentum with international clients. During the pandemic, their relationships strengthened, with these large accounts continuing to increase their average spending with InterCloud — in some cases by several hundred thousand euros per year. Cloud usage also grew significantly, particularly among developers.”
Another motivation for InterCloud was to provide liquidity to certain investors who had been shareholders for several years. However, while several business angels fully exited their positions during the third round, that is not the case this time, as all shareholders are remaining in the company’s capital.
Following the fundraising, the management team, which has not held a majority stake for the past five years, remains the company’s largest shareholder group, now alongside Aleph Capital.

M&A Growth Opportunities

InterCloud specializes in multi-cloud architecture orchestration for large enterprises. It has around one hundred major corporate clients across Europe, including Schneider Electric, Veolia, Société Générale, Airbus, and Sodexo.
“The company has developed the ability to create a software layer that connects different types of cloud environments, whether access to public clouds or to companies’ private clouds, with the application layer on top,” explains Joy Sioufi. “They do not store the data, but work with partners such as AWS and OVH.”
InterCloud, which remains tight-lipped about its revenues, estimated by our sources at between €15 million and €25 million, plans to continue investing in “this orchestration phenomenon,” which requires adapting the software layer and enabling the integration of as many APIs as possible.
Another source of growth and development in the coming months will be further international expansion. This ambition could be pursued through acquisitions. Although no specific target is currently being prioritized, InterCloud, which employs more than 100 people, now has sufficient financial resources to seize one or more external growth opportunities.

Article published by CFNEWS, on January 28, 2022.

Taking charge of your health sounds all well and good… but you still need to know what is really wrong and what to do about it.
Founded this autumn, Zoī (“life” in Greek) plans to open its first center by the end of 2022, “at the intersection of medicine and wellness.” A 360° health check-up (blood tests, ECG, etc.) will serve as the basis for developing a personalized program delivered through digital support, enabling patients to put into practice all the recommendations — exercise, sleep, nutrition, stress management, etc. — that will drastically improve their quality of life, immediately and over the long term, at a cost of €2,000 per year.
To achieve this, the young company combines data science and behavioral science through a proprietary deep-tech tool. It has just raised €20 million in a seed round that brought together an array of business angels around the company.

50 employees by the end of 2022

“We were looking for individual investors who were genuinely interested in the project and who could provide us with personal support,” explain the founders, Ismaël Emelien, former special adviser to Emmanuel Macron, and Paul Dupuy, a serial entrepreneur (he notably co-founded Never Eat Alone), alongside Cédric Carbone and Fabrice Bonan, former Talend executives who served as CTO and CPO respectively, as well as Claude Dalle, an expert in 5P medicine (preventive, predictive, positive, personalized and participatory) and healthy aging.
With its “holistic, digital and physical” approach, the founding team has attracted Stéphane Bancel (Moderna) and Jean-Claude Marian (Orpea) as lead investors, as well as Xavier Niel (Free), Rodolphe Saadé (CMA CGM), Hassanein Hiridjee (Axian Group), Jean-Marie Messier (Messier Partners), Jean Moueix (Petrus), Emmanuel Goldstein (Morgan Stanley), and Patrick Levy-Waitz (Chairman of ITG and the Fondation Travailler Autrement).
“We are looking to expand our team, which already brings together some of the world’s leading specialists in their respective fields,” says Ismaël Emelien, who plans to increase the workforce fivefold, reaching 50 employees by the end of 2022.
The company is already offering those eager to get started the opportunity to pre-register.

Article CF NEWS BY RODOLPHE LANGLOIS Published on 15 Dec 2021 at 14:49

Since 2018, and its first round of financing, the challenge for Uavia has been to demonstrate the usefulness of its technology to industry (see below). According to the publisher, which provides a collaborative platform for piloting autonomous and connected drones, it has achieved its goal, since the Total group, as part of a collaborative programme, has validated its interest in facilitating and securing the deployment of drones in order to capture data on their industrial sites. Its new ambition is now to “supply the major system integrators, to continue to find new use cases and to hand over our technologies to them, who can scale up to deployments for major clients”, confides Pierre Vilpoux, President of Uavia for the past two years. In this context, Uavia is raising €5m and inviting Innovacom and Cattleya Finance, the investment holding company of Benjamin & Ariane de Rothschild, to join its capital. The existing shareholders, UI Investissement and Bpifrance, who participated in the fundraising process, are taking advantage of the opportunity to reinject cash.

Validated economic model

One of the first recognised uses of the software platform is its ability to carry out remote missions. Uavia, which works with six to seven drone manufacturers, thus facilitates the piloting of surveillance, maintenance, verification or crisis management missions. “We have validated our business model. As a technology provider, we are going to hire system integrators worldwide who will represent the technology on the markets,” explains the manager. Our technologies allow us to take measurements directly inside the drone using our on-board intelligence, and to have real-time visualisations, such as for the search for pollutants on industrial sites. Uavia wants to offer end-users, particularly large groups in the energy, logistics or oil and chemical industry sectors, a unified and secure interface, with all configuration and usage settings being made via the software interface. The company, which will increase its workforce from 23 to 40 next year, is facing a market player such as the Swiss company Autérion.

The stakeholders of the UAVIA operation

Target company: UAVIA

Buyer or Investor : INNOVACOM , UI INVESTISSEMENT (EX UI GESTION) , BPIFRANCE INVESTISSEMENT , PERSON(S) PHYSICAL , Benjamin de Rothschild , Ariane de Rothschild

Purchaser Corporate Lawyer : JOFFE & ASSOCIES

Company Corporate Lawyer : FIDAL , Anne Fréchette-Kerbrat

Article NEOTEK, published on 14 December 2021

Sea Vorian, a company created by a pool of investors led by Jean-Luc Biache and François-Xavier de Cointet, is acquiring 100% of Seafin, the leading distributor and manufacturer of high-tech products for the blue economy, from its founder Claude Pacheco, the Atalaya and Financière de Brienne 2 funds managed by Ace Capital Partners and the SFLD fund.

Founded in September 2004 by Claude Pacheco, Neotek specialises in the distribution and integration of data acquisition, oceanographic and hydrographic instrumentation, positioning, UAV and mine clearance equipment.

RTSys, acquired in 2012 when Ace Capital Partners funds entered the market, has established itself in the design and manufacture of underwater acoustics and robotics products. Its high level of expertise is now recognised in 4 main areas of innovation: passive acoustic monitoring (PAM), underwater exploration via autonomous underwater drones (AUV), mine countermeasures (MCM) and anti-submarine warfare (ASW).

Numerous R&D programmes have been carried out in partnership with the Directorate General for Armaments, the Pôles Mer de Compétitivité, or the European Defence Fund, to design miniaturised products without compromising either performance or cost. Renewable marine energies, deep sea exploration and anti-submarine warfare are all sectors in which the Seafin group now claims a leading position.

With the transfer of the group to Sea Vorian, a new stage is opening up for the Seafin group to become an undisputed European player in the naval, civil and defence submarine markets.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Article CF NEWS BY RODOLPHE LANGLOIS Published on 7 Dec 2021 at 14:00

GitGuardian’s international dimension is set to grow further in the coming months. Born in 2017, this publisher of an automated detection solution for secrets hosted in the cloud has generated 75% of its revenues in the United States since its first round of funding in 2019, which has remained confidential (see below). The company, co-founded by Jérémy Thomas and already sponsored by Balderton Capital, Bpifrance and Germany’s Fly Ventures, is opening up directly to Eurazeo and Californian VC Sapphire Ventures in its series B round, which amounts to just over €39m ($44m). Alongside these two investors, who were also involved in Andjaro’s third round last year (see below), several of the company’s historical shareholders have taken the opportunity to strengthen their positions. Together, they value the Paris-based software publisher at just over €156m ($177m), three times more than two years ago. The whole process was quick,” says Jérémy Thomas, “since it took us a month to obtain our first term sheet. After that, we had to turn down proposals from five investment funds.

A first branch in the US

Within the source code security market, which is expected to reach between $50 and $100 billion by 2025, GitGuardian operates in a niche vertical, DevSecOps, estimated at $10 billion, i.e. the automated detection and identification of leaks of sensitive authentication data processed daily by developers. Its international clients include Talend, Mirantis, Instacart, Genesys, Now:Pensions and Maven Wave, “which spent an average of $140K this year,” adds the executive. We are the number one source code security application on GitHub in terms of number and installation, with 130,000 downloads.” The company, which employs 60 people, wants to take advantage of its funding to add other types of vulnerability, and thus move into adjacent verticals by 2022, which form a “very fragmented” market, in which the Israeli start-up Checkmarx, in particular, is operating. GitGuardian should also open its first foreign office next year, with the creation of an office in Texas, headed by Jérémy Thomas. The publisher could also launch a recruitment campaign for a hundred people by 2022.