Ardian acquires majority stake in Vecos, enabling growth

Paris / Frank­furt a. M. — Ardian, one of the world’s leading inde­pen­dent invest­ment compa­nies, has announ­ced an agree­ment to acquire a majo­rity stake in Vecos. Vecos is a leading global provi­der of tech­­no­­logy-enab­­led smart locker solu­ti­ons with a focus on offices, educa­tion and health­care faci­li­ties. Ardian acqui­red the stake from Bencis, who have supported the growth of the company since their invest­ment in 2019. The manage­ment team around CEO Bram Kuipers will conti­nue to lead the company and will re-invest along­side Ardian as part of the tran­sac­tion. Vecos was foun­ded as an elec­tri­cal engi­nee­ring company and, under the leader­ship of current CEO Bram Kuipers, has deve­lo­ped into a provi­der of end-to-end solu­ti­ons for smart locker systems. Vecos’ custo­mi­zed and easy-to-use locker system is speci­fi­cally desi­gned to help employees work more flexi­bly in dyna­mic and hybrid work envi­ron­ments. The solu­tion combi­nes hard­ware (physi­cal locks and termi­nals) with a proprie­tary Soft­­ware-as-a-Service (SaaS) plat­form and supports various autho­riza­tion tech­no­lo­gies such as employee badges or a cloud-based app for employees. Faci­lity mana­gers bene­fit from a web-based user inter­face for remote manage­ment of the lockers and receive real-time data on their use via an online portal. The solu­ti­ons also offer cost opti­miza­tion poten­tial compared to conven­tio­nal mecha­ni­cal or elec­tro­nic locks. The Vecos solu­tion can be seam­lessly inte­gra­ted into the IT or work­place ecosys­tem of its custo­mers, enab­ling harmo­ni­zed manage­ment across all loca­ti­ons. Vecos has long-stan­­ding custo­mer rela­ti­onships with blue-chip compa­nies world­wide and has a strong presence in Europe, Asia-Paci­­fic and the USA. The sustained trend towards hybrid working models in compa­nies is leading to an incre­asing demand for flexi­ble office solu­tion concepts. Vecos is ideally posi­tio­ned to bene­fit from this trend. The dyna­mic market deve­lo­p­ment supports Ardian’s invest­ment thesis: against the back­drop of the growing importance of flexi­bi­lity and adap­ta­bi­lity in the work­place, the rele­vance of Vecos’ offe­ring is incre­asing. Compa­nies are speci­fi­cally looking for solu­ti­ons with which they can tailor their office space to the new usage beha­vior of their employees. In addi­tion, Vecos addres­ses compa­nies’ efforts to achieve envi­ron­men­tal targets, for exam­ple in rela­tion to their carbon foot­print. This concern is in line with Ardian’s invest­ment philo­so­phy. Toge­ther with Vecos’ manage­ment team, Ardian looks forward to support­ing the company on its plan­ned growth path in the coming years. “This acqui­si­tion repres­ents a signi­fi­cant oppor­tu­nity for both Ardian and Vecos. Our part­ner­ship with the Vecos manage­ment team will focus, among other things, on further acce­le­ra­ting inter­na­tio­nal growth in Europe, parti­cu­larly in Germany and France, as well as in the US. 

In addi­tion, we see great poten­tial in the appli­ca­tion of Arti­fi­cial Intel­­li­­gence-based digi­tal solu­ti­ons to support opera­tio­nal proces­ses,” explains Florian Haas, Direc­tor Expan­sion at ARDIAN. “The part­ner­ship with Vecos is Ardian Expansion’s second invest­ment in the Nether­lands and under­lines our ambi­ti­ons in the region. We are exci­ted about the oppor­tu­nity to support Vecos’ manage­ment team in the next phase of growth through our Ardian plat­form,” said Dirk Witt­ne­ben, Mana­ging Direc­tor Expan­sion at ARDIAN. “Ardian is the ideal part­ner for us due to our shared values and goals. Ardian’s exper­tise in scaling busi­nesses combi­ned with its commit­ment to sustainable growth will enable us to further expand our leading posi­tion in the smart locker segment and extend our reach in key growth markets. We look forward to seizing these oppor­tu­ni­ties toge­ther to play an active role in the realiza­tion of future work­place envi­ron­ments,” said Bram Kuipers, CEO, VECOS.

Parties invol­ved in the transaction

Ardian: Dirk Witt­ne­ben, Florian Haas, Max Dolata, Stef­fen Prochazka, Janine Paus­tian, Mathieu Lebrun Bencis: Katrien Bosquet, Bo Kroe­zen M&A: Jeffe­ries (Serge Fiel­mich, Lars van Leeu­wen­stijn, Ritika Langer) Legal: Clif­ford Chance (Jeroen Thijs­sen, Simon Reitz) Commer­cial: EY Parthe­non (Georg Hoch­leit­ner, Dr. Burak Yahsi) Finan­cial: Deloitte (Egon Sach­sal­ber, Nils Nobereit)

Tax / Struc­tu­ring: EY (Anne Mieke Holland)

Tech: Arte­fact (Arnold Struik, Jur Gaarlandt)