Koesio is the story of a French digital services company whose growth over the years has been the result of a series of acquisitions. Offering a range of business services (communication, digitisation, data management, security, IT maintenance and printing), the group has just acquired a major industry player. Experts at AURIS Finance, a mergers and acquisitions consultancy, share with you the keys to successful growth through successive acquisitions.
Following the acquisition of Actual Invest in December 2021, Koesio has now acquired Ipneos. As part of Koesio’s strategy to diversify its offering around telecommunications, the acquisition of the IT services company, which has 3,000 employees and a portfolio of around 80,000 corporate clients, is a logical step. The group’s stated aim is to be a one-stop shop for all its customers’ digitisation needs. To achieve this, Koesio has made a number of acquisitions in France, Belgium, and Luxembourg. In 2021, Koesio made two acquisitions in Belgium: DAVIN in July, followed by VCOMM in October 2021. The two companies, operating under the Koesio Belgium brand, employ 100 people and have a combined turnover of €25 million.
More than 130 acquisitions
These recent acquisitions are part of the growth strategy of the group, which was founded in 1991. Over the years, Koesio has expanded its offering to cover all the IT needs of companies and local authorities, from IT to management and financial application solutions, office automation, and the cloud. Since its establishment, Koesio has completed more than 130 acquisitions, 84 of which were completed between 2018 and 2022. This represents a significant acceleration for the company, which aims to reach €1 billion in revenue by 2024. The turnover for 2021 stands at €700 million.
A sector ripe for mergers
In order to offer companies and local authorities a complete range of digitised services, Koesio has chosen to grow through successive acquisitions. Dynamic organic growth is not enough to address all the issues facing the sector. This strategy enables rapid business growth and market share gains. The software and IT tools sector is made up of a large number of small and medium-sized companies that specialise in a particular type of service. Like digital companies, those specialising in digitisation for businesses experienced a boom in 2020 and 2021. According to GlobalData, worldwide transactions involving IT companies reached $243.37 billion in the fourth quarter of 2020. This represents an increase of 12.5% year-on-year.
Inorganic growth: get the support you need
Any company that is in a phase of development and wants to grow through acquisitions is running a risk. Growing too fast can cause the business to become unbalanced. Rapidly expanding teams and new client offerings that need to be integrated into the business are all changes that must be anticipated in advance. Whatever issues you are facing, AURIS Finance’s specialists will be at your side with their sector-specific expertise.
