Waterland becomes majority shareholder in IT platform dacoso

Hamburg / Langen — With the Euro­pean invest­ment company Water­land, dacoso has brought a strong growth part­ner on board. Toge­ther with the new majo­rity share­hol­der, inter­na­tio­nal expan­sion is to be driven forward and the successful course of the company, which is head­quar­te­red in Langen, Hesse, is to be inten­si­fied. In the course of digi­ta­liza­tion, the markets for ICT networks and cyber secu­rity will conti­nue to grow signi­fi­cantly globally in the coming years. dacoso, one of the leading IT service provi­ders for networks and cyber secu­rity in the DACH region, also wants to bene­fit from this.

The sellers of the shares are the company foun­ders Thomas Joswig and Horst Pohl as well as their two sons Felix Pohl and Robin Pohl; all will remain share­hol­ders in the future and Felix Pohl will conti­nue to lead the group as CEO. The tran­sac­tion is still subject to custo­mary regu­la­tory appr­ovals; finan­cial details will not be disclosed

Foun­ded in 2004 and conti­nuously growing, dacoso GmbH is a leading IT network inte­gra­tor and data secu­rity provi­der in the DACH region. The focus is on mana­ged services for opti­cal networks, intel­li­gent networks and cyber secu­rity, which dacoso opera­tes for its busi­ness custo­mers in its own certi­fied IT Network & Secu­rity Opera­ti­ons Center (SOC). These are comple­men­ted by services such as consul­ting, inte­gra­tion and roll­out with nati­on­wide field service — a holi­stic port­fo­lio that focu­ses on perfor­mance, data secu­rity and econo­mic effi­ci­ency as well as the customer’s criti­cal infra­struc­ture. The long-stan­­ding custo­mer base includes nume­rous well-known blue-chip compa­nies (enter­prise and carrier), which use dacoso to connect data centers, network loca­ti­ons or set up carrier back­bones, for exam­ple, and to iden­tify and ward off attack risks. In addi­tion to its head­quar­ters near Frank­furt am Main, dacoso is present at eleven other loca­ti­ons in Germany, Austria and Switz­er­land and gene­ra­tes a three-digit million euro turno­ver with almost 300 employees.

Thomas Joswig and Horst Pohl agree: “After 20 years, it is the perfect time to hand over the manage­ment comple­tely to the new gene­ra­tion and to enter the next stage of orga­nic and inor­ga­nic growth — we are deligh­ted to have found a part­ner in Water­land who will closely accom­pany us on this path with exper­tise and finan­cial strength. Both employees and custo­mers will bene­fit from this partnership.”

CEO Felix Pohl says: “In Water­land, we have found a part­ner for our future path who has special exper­tise in the further deve­lo­p­ment of growth compa­nies as well as many years of expe­ri­ence in the ICT sector. The chemis­try is also right — on this opti­mal basis, we now want to tackle the deve­lo­p­ment of an inter­na­tio­nally market-leading group of companies.”

Dr. Cars­ten Rahlfs, Mana­ging Part­ner at Water­land (photo © Water­land), adds: “A stable ICT infra­struc­ture with high trans­mis­sion volu­mes and defense against cyber attacks are beco­ming incre­asingly important. The corre­spon­ding posi­tio­ning of dacoso in its indus­try is alre­ady excel­lent in the DACH region; now we want to join forces to build a Euro­pean market leader in the field of network inte­gra­tion and cyber security.”

Water­land is one of the most active Euro­pean invest­ment compa­nies and has made nume­rous invest­ments in the digi­ta­liza­tion, IT and tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons sectors. In the DACH region in parti­cu­lar, the port­fo­lio curr­ently includes compa­nies such as netgo (IT service provi­der), Hyand (soft­ware deve­lo­p­ment), enreach (unified commu­ni­ca­ti­ons), Skay­link (mana­ged enter­prise plat­form) and Serrala (payment technologies).

About Water­land

Water­land is an inde­pen­dent private equity invest­ment firm that helps compa­nies realize their growth plans. With substan­tial finan­cial support and indus­try exper­tise, Water­land enables its port­fo­lio compa­nies to achieve acce­le­ra­ted growth both orga­ni­cally and through acqui­si­ti­ons. Water­land has offices in the Nether­lands, Belgium, France, Germany, Poland, the UK, Ireland, Denmark, Norway, Spain and Switz­er­land. Curr­ently, appro­xi­m­ately 14 billion euros in equity funds are under management.
Water­land has consis­t­ently outper­for­med with its invest­ments since its incep­tion in 1999. The company ranks fourth globally in the HEC/Dow Jones Private Equity Perfor­mance Ranking (Janu­ary 2023) and seventh among global private equity compa­nies in the Preqin Consis­tent Perfor­mers in Global Private Equity & Venture Capi­tal Report 2022.
www.waterland.de