Oakley Capital acquires Damovo Europe

Oakley Capital Private Equity is pleased to announce that Oakley Capital Private Equity II (“Fund II”) has acquired a significant majority of the shares in the European companies owned and operated by Damovo II Sarl.

Matthew Riley, founder of Daisy Group plc (“Daisy Group”), will be investing alongside Fund II and will lead the businesses as Executive Chairman.

The businesses that have been acquired are: Damovo’s operations in Germany, Ireland, Switzerland, Poland, Belgium and Damovo’s Global Services business (collectively “Damovo Europe”). Damovo Europe is a provider of enterprise information communication technology (ICT) services and solutions. Its core areas of expertise are Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC: IPenabled voice communications, email exchange services, messaging, voicemail, audio, web and video conferencing etc), enterprise networks, contact centres, cloud services and global managed services. Damovo Europe employs 271 people across its 14 locations in continental Europe.

Oakley Capital Private Equity has a well-established track record in the Telecoms, UCC and adjacent sectors through its investments in Daisy Group, Host Europe Group and intergenia, investments that generated returns of 35 times, 2.4 times and 2.5 times, respectively for Oakley Capital Private Equity.

The particular attractions of investing in Damovo Europe include:

1. Managed services revenue making up 50% of revenues, with a strategy to increase this proportion going forward
2. A reputation for delivering exceptional customer satisfaction
3. The opportunity for significant revenue and margin growth through investment and economies of scale
4. The opportunity to back a strong and experienced management team (led by Matthew Riley) in a European roll-up strategy, replicating the success of Daisy Group
5. It is well positioned to take advantage of ICT market growth, particularly within UCC

Commenting on the acquisition, Rebecca Gibson, Partner of Oakley Capital Private Equity said: “Damovo Europe is already very well established in a number of European markets and the fact that the worldwide Unified Communications market is expected to be worth in excess of $75Bn by 2020 with significant growth expected to come from within Europe, makes Damovo Europe an obvious choice to add to Oakley’s portfolio. I am particularly pleased that Matt Riley will be investing alongside us and will be Executive Chairman. He has an exceptional record of valuation creation in the sector.”