Author: Tatjana Anderer

Munich, Luxem­bourg — IDnow, a leading provi­der of Iden­tity Veri­fi­ca­tion-as-a-Service solu­ti­ons, recei­ves 15 million in growth funding from the Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank. The funds will be used for IDnow’s rese­arch, deve­lo­p­ment and inter­na­tio­nal expan­sion. The finan­cing of the Bank of the EU is made possi­ble by the Invest­ment Plan for Europe.

The Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank (EIB) is awar­ding EUR 15 million in growth finan­cing to the German iden­tity veri­fi­ca­tion plat­form IDnow. IDnow specia­li­zes in secure remote auto and video iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and elec­tro­nic signa­tures. Compa­nies can thus acquire custo­mers and carry out tran­sac­tions more quickly and easily without viola­ting “Know Your Custo­mer” and money laun­de­ring regu­la­ti­ons. The invest­ment will prima­rily go towards IDnow’s rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment acti­vi­ties and inter­na­tio­nal expansion.

The finan­cing falls under the Euro­pean Growth Finance Faci­lity (EGFF), made possi­ble by the guaran­tee of the Euro­pean Fund for Stra­te­gic Invest­ments (EFSI). EGFF is desi­gned to fill a gap in quasi-equity finan­cing in Europe. This gap is caused by struc­tu­ral market fail­ures in provi­ding suita­ble venture capi­tal to compa­nies that have alre­ady recei­ved venture capi­tal and are now in a later stage. Euro­pean small, medium and mid-cap compa­nies often suffer from a syste­mic shortage of non-dilu­tive large-scale finan­cing for growth invest­ments in property, plant and equip­ment and intan­gi­ble assets. The bene­fit of the EFSI in this case is that it signi­fi­cantly impro­ves the bank’s risk-bearing capacity.

The EFSI is the main pillar of the Invest­ment Plan for Europe, in which the EIB and the Euro­pean Commis­sion work toge­ther as stra­te­gic part­ners. With its loans, the EIB is helping to make the Euro­pean economy more compe­ti­tive. In addi­tion, there is the Euro­pean Invest­ment Advi­sory Hub (EIAH), which helps public and private project promo­ters struc­ture invest­ment projects in a more profes­sio­nal manner.

Ambroise Fayolle, EIB Vice-Presi­dent over­see­ing EFSI as well as the Bank’s opera­ti­ons in Germany, said: “IDnow, which is recei­ving an EIB loan for the first time, has to invest signi­fi­cantly in its rese­arch, deve­lo­p­ment and commer­cia­liza­tion acti­vi­ties. This loan is an excel­lent exam­ple of how the EU’s bank can use the Invest­ment Plan for Europe to foster inno­va­tion, espe­ci­ally in sensi­tive areas such as the fight against money laun­de­ring and terro­rist finan­cing, as well as cyber­se­cu­rity, which are of great stra­te­gic importance to the EU and its economy.”

Euro­pean Commis­sio­ner for Econo­mic Affairs Paolo Genti­loni said: “As more and more of our inter­ac­tions take place online, it is more important than ever that we streng­then data secu­rity and fraud preven­tion. It is right that the Invest­ment Plan for Europe contri­bu­tes to these efforts. This support will enable the German plat­form IDnow to expand its services for digi­tal iden­tity veri­fi­ca­tion of custo­mers and busi­ness part­ners. We are inves­t­ing in a secure busi­ness envi­ron­ment online, one of the goals of our digi­tal finance strategy.”

IDnow CFO Joe Lich­ten­ber­ger said, “Covid-19 has noti­ce­ably boos­ted demand for digi­tal services, and thus for our ‘veri­fi­ca­tion as-a-service’ solu­tion, across various indus­tries and geogra­phies. EIB’s flexi­ble finan­cing helps us to invest faster in the deve­lo­p­ment of the plat­form and take advan­tage of busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties. The EIB is the ideal part­ner for us to estab­lish oursel­ves as a leading Euro­pean iden­tity veri­fi­ca­tion provider.”

About IDnow

With its Iden­tity Veri­fi­ca­tion as a Service (IVaaS) plat­form, IDnow is on a mission to make the connec­ted world a safer place. IDnow’s unma­ni­pulable iden­tity veri­fi­ca­tion is used in all indus­tries where compa­nies conduct online custo­mer inter­ac­tions that require the highest level of secu­rity. IDnow tech­no­logy uses arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to ensure that all secu­rity features are present on an ID docu­ment and can ther­e­fore relia­bly detect coun­ter­feit docu­ments. Poten­ti­ally, the iden­ti­ties of more than 7 billion custo­mers from 193 diffe­rent count­ries can be verified.
IDnow covers a wide range of use cases both in regu­la­ted indus­tries in Europe and for comple­tely new digi­tal busi­ness models world­wide. Through the plat­form, iden­tity flow can be custo­mi­zed on a case-by-case basis to meet regio­nal, legal and busi­ness requirements.
IDnow is supported by venture capi­tal inves­tors Corsair Capi­tal, BayBG, Seven­ture Part­ner, G+D Ventures and a consor­tium of renow­ned busi­ness angels. Its more than 250 custo­mers include leading inter­na­tio­nal compa­nies from various indus­tries such as Bank of Scot­land, BNP Pari­bas, Commerz­bank, even­tim, Raisin (Welt­spa­ren), Sixt, sola­ris­Bank, Tele­fó­nica Deutsch­land, UBS and Western Union, as well as fintechs such as Fidor, N26, smava and wefox.

The Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank

The Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank (EIB) is the long-term lending insti­tu­tion of the Euro­pean Union. Its share­hol­ders are the member states of the EU. The EIB lends long-term funds to sound projects that meet EU objectives.

The invest­ment offen­sive for Europe

The Invest­ment Plan for Europe aims to boost invest­ment in Europe and thus create jobs. Through guaran­tees from the Euro­pean Fund for Stra­te­gic Invest­ments (EFSI), the EIB and the EIF are able to assume a larger share of the project risk, making it easier for private finan­ciers to also parti­ci­pate in the projects. The projects and agree­ments appro­ved so far for EFSI-guaran­teed finan­cing are expec­ted to mobi­lize €535.4 billion in invest­ments and bene­fit over 1.4 million start-ups and small and medium-sized enter­pri­ses across all EU countries.

London / Deli­vier — Global invest­ment firm The Carlyle Group (NASDAQ: CG) today has agreed to acquire the Acro­tec Group, in part­ner­ship with its manage­ment team, from Castik Capi­tal (photo: Michael Phil­ipps, foun­der of Casik Capi­tal). The tran­sac­tion is subject to regu­la­tory appr­ovals and is expec­ted to close in Q1 2021.

Head­quar­te­red in Deve­lier, Switz­er­land, Acro­tec is a leading inde­pen­dent supplier of high precis­ion indus­trial appli­ca­ti­ons to the watch­ma­king and MedTech indus­tries as well as other high value indus­trial end markets, such as Auto­mo­tive, Elec­tro­nics and Aero­space. The company is a market-leading supplier into the estab­lished Swiss luxury watch-making market, manu­fac­tu­ring criti­cal compon­ents for mecha­ni­cal watch move­ments with major luxury watch brands as key custo­mers. Acro­tec recently expan­ded its posi­tion as a trus­ted MedTech contract manu­fac­tu­rer lever­aging its high-precis­ion engi­nee­ring capa­bi­li­ties to service a diver­si­fied base of global custo­mers. The company employs appro­xi­m­ately 1,200 people across 18 loca­ti­ons and exports to over 40 countries.

Expan­sion plans for Acrotec’s MedTech business 

The Carlyle Group will support Acro­tec in acce­le­ra­ting its growth plan through the deve­lo­p­ment of its exis­ting plat­form and through acqui­si­ti­ons. Lever­aging Carlyle’s global Health­care exper­tise and network, the part­ner­ship will seek to broa­den Acrotec’s MedTech busi­ness with expan­sion into new services and geogra­phies in Europe and in the United States.

Fran­çois Billig, foun­der and CEO of the Acro­tec Group, said: “In Carlyle, I am deligh­ted that we have found a part­ner that under­stands and appre­cia­tes the core values of the Group. This part­ner­ship, which repres­ents an important mile­stone in Acrotec’s history, will signi­fi­cantly acce­le­rate our growth and diver­si­fi­ca­tion plan while remai­ning loyal to our core busi­ness in high precis­ion appli­ca­ti­ons. Castik has been a valuable part­ner over the past four years, support­ing the busi­ness to conso­li­date its leading posi­tion in mecha­ni­cal watch making, and over­see­ing a key phase of its deve­lo­p­ment, while respec­ting the values of the Group.”

Jona­than Zafrani (photo), Mana­ging Direc­tor of the Carlyle Europe Part­ners advi­sory team, said: “We were attrac­ted to Acro­tec given its strong entre­pre­neu­rial spirit, its market-leading posi­ti­ons in the growing Swiss mecha­ni­cal watch market as well as for various precis­ion high-tech appli­ca­ti­ons, and the attrac­tive growth oppor­tu­nity in the global MedTech contract manu­fac­tu­ring market. The company has a strong repu­ta­tion with its custo­mers for manu­fac­tu­ring compon­ents that require the highest level of tech­no­logy and craft­sman­ship. We are exci­ted to part­ner with the Acro­tec manage­ment team and look forward to lever­aging our signi­fi­cant exper­tise in Indus­tri­als and Health­care to support Acrotec’s future growth.”

Michael Phil­lips, Invest­ment Part­ner and member of the Board of Mana­gers of Castik Capi­tal S.à r.l., said: “It was a great plea­sure support­ing Fran­çois and his entre­pre­neu­rial manage­ment team at Acro­tec over the last four years. During Castik’s owner­ship, the company pursued an active conso­li­da­tion stra­tegy, acqui­ring 12 stra­te­gic add-ons and successfully expan­ding into the MedTech indus­try. We wish Acro­tec all the best in the future and are confi­dent that Carlyle is the right part­ner to further drive the company’s excep­tio­nal performance.”

About Acrotec

Acro­tec is an inde­pen­dent group crea­ted by micro­me­cha­nics profes­sio­nals. Its main objec­tive is to be a refe­rence subcon­trac­tor by offe­ring a wide range of manu­fac­tu­ring proces­ses for precis­ion compon­ents. Its stra­tegy is both to provide “Swiss Made” quality products to the entire watch indus­try as well as to the auto­mo­tive, elec­tro­nics, medi­cal, jewelry and aero­nau­tics indus­tries. Acro­tec distin­gu­is­hes itself by the extent of the know-how exer­cised under the same roof, in precis­ion machi­ning (CNC turning, CNC multi­spindle turning, cam-opera­ted turning, 3 & 5 axis milling, micro-turning, trans­fer and machi­ning of precious metals), by support proces­ses (surface treat­ment, cutting, assem­bly, heat treat­ment, deco­ra­tion and laser engra­ving) and by speci­fic proces­ses (realiza­tion of compon­ents by UV-Liga, wire erosion/sinking, machi­ning of synthe­tic stones, lami­na­tion, shaping of springs, realiza­tion of machi­nes and tools and engra­ving on sili­con — DRIE). Curr­ently, the Group has more than 1,200 employees.
www.acrotec.ch

About The Carlyle Group

The Carlyle Group (NASDAQ: CG) is a global invest­ment firm with deep indus­try exper­tise that deploys private capi­tal across four busi­ness segments: Corpo­rate Private Equity, Real Assets, Global Credit and Invest­ment Solu­ti­ons. With $230 billion of assets under manage­ment as of Septem­ber 30, 2020, Carlyle’s purpose is to invest wisely and create value on behalf of its inves­tors, port­fo­lio compa­nies and the commu­ni­ties in which we live and invest. The Carlyle Group employs more than 1,800 people in 30 offices across six conti­nents. Further infor­ma­tion is available at www.carlyle.com. Follow The Carlyle Group on Twit­ter @OneCarlyle

Frank­furt am Main — Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG (DBAG) intends to conti­nue growing: The net asset value of private equity invest­ments is expec­ted to increase by an average of between 14 percent and 19 percent in the current and the two follo­wing finan­cial years, while earnings from fund advi­sory services are expec­ted to reach a double-digit million euro amount in each case. This is accor­ding to the listed private equity company’s medium-term plan­ning published today with the Group’s 2019/2020 annual finan­cial report.

The basis for this growth is signi­fi­cantly higher invest­ments by DBAG along­side the funds it advi­ses, as well as invest­ments finan­ced exclu­si­vely from DBAG’s balance sheet: While an average of around 72 million euros has flowed into invest­ments in mid-market compa­nies over the past five years, around 120 million euros are plan­ned annu­ally until 2023. “If nothing else, the Covid 19 pande­mic is opening up invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties that we intend to target,” said DBAG CEO Tors­ten Grede, adding, “We have expan­ded our plat­form for equity solu­ti­ons in the midmar­ket and inves­ted in our invest­ment team.”

Net asset value of private equity invest­ments impac­ted by pande­mic in 2019/2020
Accor­ding to the plan­ning, DBAG’s growth will acce­le­rate: Between 2014 and 2019, the net asset value of private equity invest­ments had increased by around 13 percent annu­ally. It is expec­ted to grow by up to 19 percent per year until 2023. The growth would also more than offset the setback expe­ri­en­ced in net asset value due to the impact of the pande­mic on port­fo­lio compa­nies in fiscal year 2019/2020 (Oct. 1‑Sept. 30). At 422.0 million euros, adjus­ted for the effect of the distri­bu­tion to share­hol­ders, it fell 5.8 percent short of the previous year’s figure, but reached the upper end of the fore­cast revi­sed after the Corona shock in the spring. In parti­cu­lar, share­hol­dings with a strong link to indus­try suffe­red in some cases heavy losses in reve­nues and earnings and did not achieve their origi­nal budgets; this resul­ted in corre­spon­ding impairm­ents of these share­hol­dings. Once again, invest­ments in broad­band tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons or soft­ware compa­nies, which are bene­fiting from the acce­le­ra­ted digi­tiza­tion in many areas of life and busi­ness models, deve­lo­ped encouragingly.

Due to the special nature of its private equity busi­ness, DBAG does not manage its busi­ness using tradi­tio­nal annual perfor­mance indi­ca­tors such as EBIT or return on sales. Instead, the key perfor­mance indi­ca­tors are the varia­bles that DBAG can influence and that deter­mine the value of the two busi­ness areas of private equity invest­ments and fund advi­sory services — the net asset value of private equity invest­ments and the result of fund advi­sory services. Accor­din­gly, conso­li­da­ted net profit is not a key perfor­mance indi­ca­tor; it amounts to ‑16.8 million euros, driven by the
Perfor­mance of private equity invest­ments. This segment closed 2019/2020 with earnings before taxes of ‑25.2 million euros, down 67.3 million euros on the previous fiscal year.

Key figu­res (IFRS) 2019/2020 2018/2019
Segment result Private Equity Invest­ments -€25.2 million €42.1 million
Segment result Fund Consul­ting €9.5 million €3.0 million
Net asset value € 422.0 million € 472.1 million
Net result -€16.8 million €45.9 million
Divi­dend (2019/2020: propo­sed) €0.80 €1.50

Fund consul­tancy bene­fits from the launch of the new DBAG fund
Earnings in the second segment, fund advi­sory services, excee­ded expec­ta­ti­ons: at 9.5 million euros, they reached their highest level since the intro­duc­tion of segment report­ing in 2013/2014. The basis for the signi­fi­cant increase compared with the previous year (€3.0 million) is higher income from the fund busi­ness and lower provi­si­ons for varia­ble compen­sa­tion — this prima­rily reflects the perfor­mance of the port­fo­lio. Income was signi­fi­cantly higher (€30.6 million after €28.2 million) because DBAG has also been recei­ving income for advi­sing DBAG Fund VIII since its launch in August 2020.

The fund had been closed in May with a volume of 1.109 billion euros. As a result, the assets advi­sed and mana­ged by DBAG, which form the basis for measu­ring income from the fund busi­ness, rose to around €2.6 billion (Septem­ber 30, 2019: €1.7 billion).

Divi­dend propo­sal: 0.80 euros per share
The divi­dend propo­sal for the past finan­cial year — 0.80 euros per share — does not imply any change in DBAG’s divi­dend policy. “It prima­rily takes into account the expec­ted later returns from the port­fo­lio as a result of longer holding peri­ods for our indus­trial holdings,” said CFO Susanne Zeid­ler, explai­ning the propo­sal. He added: “We expect that as the econo­mic envi­ron­ment norma­li­zes after the pande­mic subs­i­des, we will be able to return to our policy of stable and, when­ever possi­ble, rising divi­dends next year with a divi­dend of between 1.00 and 1.20 euros per share.” The divi­dend propo­sal corre­sponds to a yield of 2.4 percent based on the average price of DBAG shares for the year.

Invest­ment decis­i­ons trig­ge­red for 314 million euros
DBAG’s invest­ment team has trig­ge­red invest­ment decis­i­ons of 314 million euros in 2019/2020. Three of these invol­ved manage­ment buyouts (MBOs) struc­tu­red for the new fund within the first two months of its invest­ment period. In addi­tion, there was another MBO with DBAG Fund VII and a first long-term invest­ment — a mino­rity stake in a fast-growing company, finan­ced exclu­si­vely from DBAG funds. Six port­fo­lio compa­nies grew stron­gly through a total of 14 corpo­rate acqui­si­ti­ons; these acqui­si­ti­ons, mainly finan­ced by the port­fo­lio compa­nies them­sel­ves, serve to acce­le­rate the imple­men­ta­tion of the stra­te­gic deve­lo­p­ment of the port­fo­lio companies.

96.8 million of the invest­ment decis­i­ons were finan­ced by DBAG from its own balance sheet. This included €5.2 million for seven port­fo­lio compa­nies that were hit harder than average by the Corona pande­mic; the addi­tio­nal equity was used to support debt finan­cing solu­ti­ons to improve the finan­cial resour­ces of these companies.

Equity ratio remains very high at 89 percent
DBAG has a solid balance sheet with an equity ratio of around 89 percent. Cash and cash equi­va­lents decreased shar­ply compared with the previous year as a result of the high level of capi­tal expen­dit­ure. Once again, these signi­fi­cantly exceed the reco­veries from the port­fo­lio. With the conclu­sion of a further credit line, DBAG increased its finan­cial room for maneu­ver by 40 million euros. In 2019/2020, DBAG was able to add six invest­ments to its port­fo­lio, inclu­ding the MBOs of Carton­plast and the DING Group, which had alre­ady been agreed in 2018/2019. One company left the port­fo­lio; this dispo­sal had also been agreed in the previous year. The two (partial) dispo­sals agreed in 2019/2020 will not take effect until the new fiscal year. As of Septem­ber 30, the port­fo­lio consis­ted of 32 invest­ments in compa­nies of the (predo­mi­nantly) German Mittelstand.

“Stra­te­gic inte­rest in mature holdings”
The DBAG Manage­ment Board is confi­dent for the new, current 2019/2020 finan­cial year and beyond. “Our posi­tion in the market is good, we can have about one billion of capi­tal ready to invest and invest in new invest­ments,” the report conti­nues. In view of the ongo­ing pande­mic, DBAG intends to place parti­cu­larly high demands on the quality of the busi­ness model, its stra­te­gic importance and the growth of the respec­tive market when asses­sing invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties. “Invest­ments from the IT services and soft­ware and broad­band tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons sectors are the main candi­da­tes for this, but also Indus­try­Tech compa­nies,” says board spokes­man Grede, “for exam­ple, manu­fac­tu­r­ers of such indus­trial compon­ents whose products make auto­ma­tion, robo­tics and digi­tiza­tion possi­ble in the first place.” In addi­tion, DBAG intends to address invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties in compa­nies in special situa­tions, i.e. those with perfor­mance-rela­ted equity requirements.

Due to the econo­mic weak­ness that has persis­ted in parts of the indus­try for some time, dispo­sals have recently been delayed. The DBAG port­fo­lio conta­ins a number of compa­nies that have been supported for a longer period of time; change proces­ses that were initia­ted at the start of the invest­ment are well advan­ced. “We are expe­ri­en­cing inte­rest from stra­te­gic inves­tors in such invest­ments,” CFO Zeid­ler said today. And further: “Howe­ver, should dispo­sals and corre­spon­ding returns be further delayed, the addi­tio­nal credit line gives us flexi­bi­lity to take advan­tage of attrac­tive invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties at any time — in addi­tion, we are exami­ning other finan­cing opti­ons, for exam­ple on the equity side.”

About DBAG
Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG, a listed company, initia­tes closed-end private equity funds and invests — predo­mi­nantly along­side DBAG funds — in well-posi­tio­ned medium-sized compa­nies with poten­tial. DBAG focu­ses on indus­trial sectors in which German SMEs are strong by inter­na­tio­nal stan­dards. An incre­asing propor­tion of equity invest­ments are in compa­nies in new growth sectors such as broad­band tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons, IT services/software and health­care. The long-term, value-enhan­cing entre­pre­neu­rial invest­ment approach makes DBAG a sought-after invest­ment part­ner in the German-spea­king region. Capi­tal mana­ged and advi­sed by the DBAG Group amounts to 2.6 billion euros