HQ Equita, a partner to SMEs in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland for almost three decades, has acquired a majority stake in the IT security specialist indevis.
The two founders Wolfgang Kurz and Andreas Mayer remain significantly invested and active in their current roles as managing directors.
indevis, headquartered in Munich, is a managed security service provider for customers from the upper mid-market with the core sectors of healthcare, law firms and management consultancies, financial service providers and public administration in the German-speaking region of Europe. Since its founding in 1999, the company has focused exclusively on the topic of IT security and has been expanding its managed security service business with double-digit growth rates for several years. indevis positions itself with an integrated end-to-end security offering to holistically secure the diverse attack vectors on customers’ IT infrastructures.
“IT security will remain one of the global megatrends in the future, gaining further momentum in Europe due to the demand for continental European solutions. In a digitalised world, IT security is a key component that every company needs and can rarely fully provide itself,” says Florian Wiemken, Partner at HQ Equita.
“indevis already has significant managed service revenues, long-standing customer relationships and certified process structures, which are reflected in the high SLA loyalty and customer satisfaction. We believe indevis is ideally positioned to benefit disproportionately from managed security service growth and look forward to expanding the business through suitable acquisitions in the coming years,” adds Kurt Weise, Senior Investment Manager at HQ Equita.
indevis is a leading managed security service provider in Germany with a focus on securing commercial and public computer networks around the IT perimeter. The customer networks are secured along three business areas with technically sophisticated services and solutions. indevis supports customers by taking over the complete responsibility for the IT security infrastructure (Managed Security Service) as well as with integrated IT security solutions for the customer’s operation on premise and with comprehensive IT security consulting services. In addition to the headquarters in Munich, there is another office location in Hamburg as well as two modern data centres; indevis employs a total of around 80 people.
“We are facing a boom – in view of new threats to IT security every day – and we can only meet these challenges together with a strong partner. Due to the personal relationship with HQ Equita, the deep technical understanding of the Equita team as well as the clear added value, we have decided in favour of HQ Equita and are looking forward to the cooperation”, says Kurz. “With the support of HQ Equita, we want to further accelerate our strong growth. In addition to expanding the service portfolio in the area of Managed Detection and Response (MDR), with the help of HQ Equita we will also push ahead with the upcoming national and international expansion – also through acquisitions,” adds Andreas Mayer, second founder and responsible for business development. Talks with possible acquisition targets are already underway.
The indevis MBO is the second investment in the IT sector by HQE Fund V, which invests in medium-sized companies across all sectors – primarily in German-speaking countries. HQ Equita thus plans to continue to steadily expand its involvement in the IT sector – both via new platform investments and with suitable add-ons. In 2019, HQ Equita already completed the fund’s first transaction in the IT sector with the MBO of EBERTLANG, the leading value-added software distributor for data protection and infrastructure software in the SME segment. In the current fund, HQ Equita is increasingly focusing on buy & build. The Packaging Group (TPG), for example, already combines three companies; at r2p, two add-ons have been made since the entry, and another is to be announced in the coming weeks.
HQ Equita was advised by wdp (commercial due diligence), Deloitte (financial due diligence), Watson Farley & Williams (legal and tax), MRH Trowe (insurance), GCA Altium (financing), Shearman & Sterling (loan agreement). The acquisition financing is structured through a syndicate consisting of Sparkasse Rhein-Nahe and Volksbank eG/Gestalterbank. The managing partners of indevis were legally advised by Brownstone Partners.
