By Emma-Victoria Farr
LONDON (Reuters) – Private equity firm Oakley is looking to sell its majority stake in German cloud hosting platform Contabo as it seeks to capitalise on demand for cloud computing fuelled by the COVID-19 pandemic, two people familiar with the situation said.
The Munich-based company could be valued at between 700 million euros and 800 million euros ($762.6 million and $871.5 million ) as part of an auction process expected after the Easter break, those people said.
London-based advisory firm Arma Partners is handling the sale, which is mainly focusing on private equity bidders, one of the people said.
The company has already drawn interest from several tech-focused buyout funds including Hg, Montagu, Vitruvian, Cinven and IK Partners, another source said.
Oakley, Arma Partners, Hg, Cinven, Montagu, Vitruvian and IK Partners declined to comment.
Oakley took over control of Contabo in 2019 from its founders. The company forecast adjusted core earnings of around 21.4 million euros for 2021 and 43.7 million euros in sales, according to public filings.
The size of the global cloud computing market is expected to grow to $832 billion by 2025 from $371 billion in 2020, at a compound annual growth rate of 17.5%, according to data from Research and Markets.
Digital business transformation became more urgent during the pandemic as shutdowns of offices, schools and enterprises increased demand for cloud solutions and services.
Contabo’s cloud hosting platform is used by developers, entrepreneurs and small and medium enterprises for web hosting, development and storage. Its hosting services are active in 189 countries.
($1 = 0.9179 euros)
(Reporting by Emma-Victoria Farr, Editing by Pamela Barbaglia and Tomasz Janowski)
