Unifiedpost Group Announces Acquisitions Supporting the Pan-European Growth Strategy

Unifiedpost Group, a leading European fintech company, delivers on its acquisition strategy. The company announces the acquisition of 21 Grams, AKTI and BanqUP. By these transactions Unifiedpost Group further develops its one-stop-shop platform and expands its activities from fifteen to twenty European countries.

Alongside its clear ambitions for organic growth, Unifiedpost Group is pursuing a focused buy-and-build strategy. Following the recent funding that the company has obtained, it is now announcing its first wave of acquisitions.

Hans Leybaert, CEO and founder of Unifiedpost Group:

“Fully aligned with the thoughtful M&A-approach of Unifiedpost Group, I am convinced that with these acquisitions we set the right steps to further create a pan-European platform for documents, identity and payment services. Unifiedpost Group is looking forward to welcoming 21 Grams, AKTI and BanqUP to become part of the Unifiedpost team and to work together to pursue a unified strategy to deliver incremental growth and value for our customers.”

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Expansion to the Nordic region

The acquisition of 21 Grams (21grams Holding AB), with its headquarters in Stockholm and business in Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark, offers Unifiedpost Group the opportunity to expand its activities in 4 countries. Since 2004, 21 Grams has been a leading provider in the Nordic countries of mission-critical outbound mailing solutions and also provides optimized post(age) and parcel services (in the wake of the postal market deregulation in the Nordic region). The company has extensive multi-channel digital and paper invoice delivery capabilities and provides tight integration with a wide variety of ERP solutions to the whole Nordic region. Over 80 million documents are processed over the 21 Grams platform on an annual basis.

Acquisition synergies can be created by bringing Unifiedpost’s one-stop-shop model together with the solutions provided by 21 Grams. By joining forces, platform services integrated with e-commerce solutions, automated payments solutions and delivering parcel optimization can be brought to the local market. Today, 21 Grams has over 800, mainly large, clients. With this acquisition, Unifiedpost now has full access to the Nordic SME-market, which comprises about 1.25 million SME’s.

Approximately 70 staff are employed at 21 Grams, which will result in an FTE-growth of approx.10% for Unifiedpost Group. 21 Grams reported a proforma revenue of €77.6m in 2019, of which €21.6m was generated from their multi-channel delivery platform (gross margin 27%), which is identical to the core documents revenue of Unifiedpost Group. A further €56.0m in revenue was generated from document and parcel logistics (gross margin 11%). The planned EBITDA of 21 Grams for 2020 is stated at €4.6m.

On December 23^rd 2020, Unifiedpost Group signed a mutually binding offer to acquire 100% of the share capital of 21 Grams. Valuation was based on a multiple of 7.5 x EBITDA of 2020. Unifiedpost Group will finance the acquisition 7% by shares and 93% by cash.

The parties have expressed their intention to complete the transaction during January 2021.

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Adding neo-bank capabilities and expansion into Poland

The acquisition of BanqUP, based in Belgium with activities in Poland, will enable Unifiedpost Group to bring more open banking and data analytics capabilities to its +440.000 SME customer base. With the integration of BanqUP’s capabilities, the Unifiedpost platform will have quick access to open banking ecosystems enabling analysis of combined banking and document data which can be used for cashflow forecasting and other purposes. This will enable the group to cross-sell and up-sell payment and financing solutions. BanqUP reported revenue of €0.8m in 2019. It has a European focus with its solutions, which are centered on the Polish market. Unifiedpost Group will merge its services with those of BanqUP to bring combined solutions to the important SME and e-invoice/payments markets in Poland, which comprise more than 1.7 million SME’s.

Unifiedpost Group will finance the acquisition 50% through shares and 50% through cash. Valuation was based on a multiple of 7.5 x revenue of 2020.

The parties have expressed their intention to complete the transaction during January 2021.

Embracing e-commerce solutions

Unifiedpost Group has agreed to acquire AKTI (AKTI NV). AKTI, a Belgian firm with annual revenue of €0.5m, is a cloud company which provides SME’s with commerce and e-commerce solutions, including order management and invoice processing. Unifiedpost Group is excited to be able to bring these services to its large customer base to fulfill the demand from its customers to integrate e-commerce solutions with its one-stop-shop platform for SME’s.

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