Inflexion Private Equity has completed the IPO of On the Beach Group, the UK short-haul packaged beach holiday provider, generating a total realised and unrealised return of 3.6x with an IRR of 84 per cent, within just 23 months of ownership.
The flotation of On the Beach has priced on the London Stock Exchange, with a market capitalisation of GBP240 million.
On the Beach operates a market leading technology platform, developed in a highly agile environment with constant innovation and personalisation to deliver a rich customer experience. Inflexion’s buyout in October 2013 helped On the Beach exploit the structural shift to online holiday bookings by supporting significant investment in R&D, brand awareness and digital enhancement. Inflexion also introduced the Chairman, Richard Segal, experienced in supporting the rapid international growth of online businesses.
Capitalising on strategic partnerships with world-class digital leaders such as Google, Inflexion worked with On the Beach to optimise search, helping to significantly increase customer conversion rates and sales. In parallel, observing rising consumer demand to book holidays using mobile devices, our Digital Director helped appoint a Head of Mobile to complement the development of the company’s mobile optimised websites; mobile devices now account for over 10 per cent of all bookings. In addition, On the Beach launched its first iOS mobile app last year and downloads have already exceeded 260,000.
On the Beach’s highly scalable business model led the way for a successful internationalisation strategy. Inflexion supported the recruitment of an International Sales Director and earlier this year On the Beach launched in Sweden. During our tenure employee numbers doubled whilst Group EBITDA for the nine months to June 2015 grew by 45 per cent compared to the same period in 2014.
Simon Turner, Managing Partner at Inflexion, says “Inflexion has a strong focus on the TMT sector and seeks to back truly distinctive management teams. Simon Cooper and his team proved to be just that, best-in-class technology entrepreneurs, at the helm of a market-leading business. Our investment accelerated the success of On the Beach both digitally and internationally. We are delighted to bring a fourth high performing company to the public markets.”
Simon Cooper, CEO of On the Beach, says: “With the support of Inflexion we have accelerated our technology capabilities, brought in-house direct contracting of bed supply, invested in brand building through investment into television advertising and expanded our geographic reach. This leaves On the Beach Group plc extremely well-placed to capitalise on the strong growth prospects of a $54 billion addressable European market.”
Inflexion has exited NAHL Group plc, FDM Group plc and Sanne Group plc via IPO during the last 18 months bringing the firm’s IPO tally to four and total exit tally to 12, for an aggregate EV of GBP1.7 billion.
The IPO process for On the Beach was led by Simon Turner, Catherine Richards and Gareth Healy. Inflexion was advised by Numis and Taylor Wessing.
