"I would prefer even to fail with honor than win by cheating."
-Sophocles
July 12,2018
Getronics Acquires Pomeroy, Creating $1.3B Company
martinwolf Transaction Analysis
Financial Information*
- Financial terms not disclosed
Transaction Facts
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European VAR Getronics announced today its completed acquisition of US-based IT solution provider Pomeroy, creating an IT services platform with combined revenues of ~$1.3B.
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Private equity firm Clearlake Capital owned Pomeroy for the last five years.
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While financial terms were not disclosed, the acquisition was enabled by a $815M financing and recapitalization transaction. CPPIB Credit Investments, a wholly owned subsidiary of Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Permira Debt Managers and White Oak Global Advisors led a $550M first lien senior tranche of the financing.
Returning to the North American Market
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Immediate Scale: Pomeroy employs 4,000 staff across 25 locations in the US and Canada (in addition to its 10 locations in western Europe). The combined company will employ 9,000 employees across 23 countries and have coverage in more than 110 countries.
- Decade-Long Wait: The acquisition allows Getronics to return to the North American market after 10 years. In 2008, then-owner KPN, a Dutch telecom giant, sold off its North American assets to CompuCom. Now the company has put US expansion back on the map after undergoing a few ownership changes — Getronics spent five years under AURELIUS, but was sold to strategic investor Bottega InvestCo in 2017, of which current CEO Nana Baffour is a majority shareholder. The US/Brazil-based Baffour, who operates in the IT services market through Grupo Cimcorp in Brazil, stated the Pomeroy acquisition helped Getronics hit its revenue target two years earlier than expected.
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Crowded Market: Under AURELIUS, Getronics expanded its portfolio through five add-on acquisitions, including the 2016 integration of CMC (Colt Managed Cloud), the cloud business of Colt Group S.A.; the integration enabled Getronics’ expansion into the European cloud market, where the overall market is dominated by Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, followed by Alibaba and IBM.
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Customer Demands: Cross-border global accounts are asking for more product and service support. In line with those demands, Pomeroy’s product offering can now support Getronics’ US services customers and service Pomeroy’s product customers internationally. This move is consistent with market momentum as with CDW’s acquisition of Kelway in August 2015, in addition to World Wide Technology and PCM expanding and joining SHI and Insight Enterprises.
For more information about this transaction, click here to read the press release.
*Financial information from the press release.
martinwolf was not the advisor in this transaction.
