Exit: DBAG sells stake in Cleanpart Group to MCC

Frank­furt am Main — Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG (DBAG) successfully comple­tes its invest­ment in Clean­part Group GmbH (Clean­part). It is selling its shares to Mitsu­bi­shi Chemi­cals Corpo­ra­tion (MCC), a Japa­nese conglo­me­rate that includes Shin­ryo, a compe­ti­tor of Clean­part. DBAG Fund VI, which is advi­sed by DBAG, and Clean­part Manage­ment are also selling their shares. Corre­spon­ding agree­ments were signed in August; their execu­tion is still subject to the appr­oval of the anti­trust autho­ri­ties. The tran­sac­tion is expec­ted to close within the next three months. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the purchase price.

Clean­part (www.cleanpart.com) is a service company for the semi­con­duc­tor indus­try. The company services process-criti­­cal compon­ents of machi­nes used predo­mi­nantly in the produc­tion of logic chips, memory chips and simi­lar compon­ents. These compon­ents must be regu­larly decon­ta­mi­na­ted, clea­ned and recoa­ted to meet the extreme clean­li­ness and perfor­mance requi­re­ments in the chip manu­fac­tu­r­ers’ produc­tion process. Compon­ents are serviced at the company’s own sites, which are loca­ted close to major custo­mers in Germany, France and the USA. The company employs 420 people; in 2017 Clean­part turned over just under 50 million euros.

DBAG and DBAG Fund VI had inves­ted in Clean­part in April 2015 as part of a succes­sion solu­tion for the family-owned company. In addi­tion to the regu­la­tion of the succes­sion, the tech­no­lo­gi­cal further deve­lo­p­ment as well as the focus on the busi­ness with the semi­con­duc­tor indus­try were objec­ti­ves of the invest­ment. For this reason, the company’s second busi­ness area, Health­care, was sold to a stra­te­gic buyer last year after a very successful deve­lo­p­ment. Despite the sale of the health care busi­ness, sales and the number of employees are signi­fi­cantly higher today than at the begin­ning of the investment.

“Clean­part is in a better posi­tion today than it was in 2015, for exam­ple due to the invest­ments that have been made in new tech­no­lo­gies in recent years in order to be able to serve parti­cu­larly deman­ding custo­mers,” said Tors­ten Grede, spokes­man for the DBAG Manage­ment Board; “the company has the best prere­qui­si­tes for deve­lo­ping well under its new owner.”

Commen­ting on the change of owner­ship,Dr. Udo Nothel­fer, Chair­man of Cleanpart’s Manage­ment Board, said, “MCC is the ideal part­ner for us and a good port of call, as both compa­nies comple­ment each other tech­no­lo­gi­cally and geogra­phi­cally.” Like Clean­part, MCC subsi­diary Shin­ryo is a service provi­der for the semi­con­duc­tor indus­try with a simi­lar port­fo­lio. Howe­ver, Shin­ryo mainly provi­des its services for other process steps in the semi­con­duc­tor indus­try. In addi­tion, the company is only active in Japan, Taiwan and China — precis­ely those regi­ons that Clean­part does not serve. Clean­part, in turn, will contri­bute its Ameri­can sites to the colla­bo­ra­tion in addi­tion to its Euro­pean busi­ness and will be able to leverage Shinryo’s strong market presence in Asia in the future. Toge­ther, Clean­part and Shin­ryo will be able to bene­fit from an expan­ded service port­fo­lio, such as Cleanpart’s mate­­ri­als-speci­­fic engi­nee­ring services and its offe­ring of indi­vi­dual compon­ents for its custo­mers’ machines.

The closing of the invest­ment in Clean­part is the second sale of a company from the DBAG Fund VI port­fo­lio. The fund had struc­tu­red eleven manage­ment buyouts between 2013 and 2016.

The portion of the proceeds from the sale now agreed upon attri­bu­ta­ble to DBAG exceeds the carry­ing amount of the invest­ment in the IFRS inte­rim finan­cial state­ments as of June 30, 2018. Although the dispo­sal will ther­e­fore result in a further contri­bu­tion to conso­li­da­ted earnings in the fourth quar­ter of 2017/2018, which ends on Septem­ber 30, 2018, the contri­bu­tion was predo­mi­nantly included in the fore­cast for the 2017/2018 conso­li­da­ted earnings of Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG, which ther­e­fore remains unch­an­ged in view of the conti­nuing uncer­tain­ties regar­ding other factors influen­cing conso­li­da­ted earnings.

About DBAG
Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG, a listed company, initia­tes closed-end private equity funds and invests along­side DBAG funds in well-posi­­tio­­ned medium-sized compa­nies with deve­lo­p­ment poten­tial. DBAG focu­ses on indus­trial sectors in which German SMEs are parti­cu­larly strong by inter­na­tio­nal stan­dards. With this expe­ri­ence, know-how and equity, it streng­thens the port­fo­lio compa­nies in imple­men­ting a long-term, value-enhan­cing corpo­rate stra­tegy. The entre­pre­neu­rial invest­ment approach makes DBAG a sought-after invest­ment part­ner in the German-spea­king region. The capi­tal mana­ged and advi­sed by the DBAG Group amounts to appro­xi­m­ately 1.8 billion euros.