Vincere Groep has been sold to Dustin

Lincoln International (“Lincoln”) is pleased to announce the successful sale of Vincere Groep based in the Netherlands, to Dustin, a publicly listed Swedish reseller of IT products with associated services. The selling shareholders of Vincere Groep include management and ABN AMRO Participaties.

Founded in 2013, Vincere Groep offers end-to-end managed services consisting of IT, security and communication solutions with associated value added hardware reselling. The company combines its nationwide coverage and scale in the Netherlands with strong expertise in serving the public sector (primarily education and healthcare) and small and medium-sized businesses. Vincere Groep operates from eight strategically located offices in the Netherlands and has approximately 370 employees.

The acquisition of Vincere Groep supports Dustin’s strategic ambition to grow its managed services proposition. The acquisition also marks the next step in Dustin’s geographic expansion, increasing its addressable market in a region similar to the Nordics in terms of customer needs and market structure.

The sale of Vincere Groep illustrates Lincoln’s strong momentum in IT managed services. Lincoln’s track record in the past 12 months alone includes, amongst others, the sale of Nexinto (a German-managed hybrid cloud solutions provider) to PlusServer, the sale of Ocean Intelligent Communications (U.K.-based digital transformation and managed services provider) to Cancom, and the sale of Synaix (Germany-based managed cloud hosting provider) to Cancom.

Henk Makaske, CEO of Vincere Groep, said, “The sale to Dustin confirms exactly why we decided to work with Lincoln International at the start of this project. Lincoln could deliver us an integrated combination of deep IT services expertise, global reach to buyers and local execution capabilities. The Lincoln team did an outstanding job in articulating our story and running an intense yet well-orchestrated process, resulting in this great outcome and exciting next chapter for our company as part of Dustin.”

Chris Brooks, Managing Director and senior member of Lincoln’s TMT group, added, “Vincere Groep attracted strong interest from both international trade and private equity, as it managed to establish a unique competitive position by executing a disciplined buy-and-build strategy, showing double-digit acquisitive as well as organic growth. As national champions are starting to surface in various European countries, we see increased cross-border consolidation activity by trade buyers to establish pan-European platform businesses. We are delighted to be one of the most active advisers in European cross-border IT managed services, leveraging our international reach and sector expertise.”

Lincoln acted as exclusive financial advisor to the sellers, leading a broad auction process with interest from both strategic investors as well as private equity. The final enterprise value of EUR 65 million (multiple of 11.6x 2017 EBITDA / 10.5x LTM EBITDA) reflects the unique strategic fit between Vincere Groep and Dustin and represents an optimal outcome for all parties involved.

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