City darling Hg Capital pockets £1.6bn as LSE-listed fund sells cloud business to German rival
City investor Hg confirmed to Morning Wire this morning the sale of Transporeon, a cloud-based transportation management software platform, to rival Trimble in a transaction valuing the business at around €1.88bn, or £1.62bn.
Transporeon provides cloud-based logistics and transport management platform, enabling automation, real-time insights and collaboration on €48bn of annual freight.
The sale marks the fourth full Hg realisation to a strategic buyer in the last 12 months, having previously sold Medifox to ResMed, Allocate Software to RL Datix and itm8 which merged with AddPro, all contributing to over $7bn collectively returned to clients in the last 12 months.
The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2023, subject to customary closing conditions including regulatory approvals.
Europe and US markets
A 20+ year focus on software businesses across Europe and North America led to Hg following the business and engaging with the team for almost a decade prior to investing in 2019.
Since then, the business has seen strong growth and continued margin expansion across various cycles, both companies said this morning.
Stephan Sieber, Chief Executive Officer at Transporeon, said: “The past three years has significantly accelerated Transporeon forward in our mission to bring transportation in sync with the world. Innovation in our products and an expansion of the business has meant we have built a remarkable platform in a rapidly growing sector, with solutions that are in high demand globally.”
In addition, Stefan Margolis, Partner at Hg, explained that “we tracked Transporeon for many years, impressed with its globally unique logistics network, solving real supply chain issues in a heavily under-digitized sector.”