Miss Group accelerates international growth with Swiss acquisition

Fast growing, international web hosting business, Miss Group, has completed the acquisition of one of Switzerland’s leading web hosting providers, Webland.

The acquisition of Webland is the fifth to be completed by Miss Group in 2021, as part of its ongoing buy-and-build strategy and will strengthen revenue and EBITDA growth for the Group in the Swiss market and the DACH region.

In addition, Miss Group has signed a Sales and Purchase Agreement with another leading Swiss hosting provider. Due for completion in January 2022, the combined acquisitions will deliver an annual turnover of €10 million, adding a total of over 100,000 Swiss customers, positioning Miss Group as a market leader in Switzerland.

Founded in 1998, and headquartered in Münchenstein, Switzerland, Webland is one of the pioneers of the Swiss hosting market. With an annual turnover of €4 million, the company manages 75,000 domains with high performance data centres located in Basel and Münchenstein.

Mattias Kaneteg, Founder and CEO of Miss Group, said: “Webland has an established presence in the Swiss market and demonstrated robust and advanced technical experience and exemplary service provision to its customers. This experience, coupled with the company’s impressive commercial performance, made it an attractive acquisition to add to Miss Group’s portfolio.

“Growing Miss Group’s presence in Switzerland and surrounding regions is a key part of our ongoing international growth and follows the launch of Hostek Sverige earlier this month to support our enterprise hosting customers across the Nordics. The combined acquisition will cement Miss Group’s position as a market leader in Switzerland, providing best-in-class hosting, domain and other web services to SME businesses across the country.”

Perwyn, the family-backed private equity business, acquired a majority position in Miss Group in February 2020 to support the growth ambitions of the business through international expansion and ongoing M&A. Webland takes the total number of acquisitions completed under Perwyn ownership to eight, with the total number of acquisitions completed by Miss Group since 2018 being 17.

Andrew Wynn, Perwyn Founder and Managing Partner added: “Miss Group has achieved an impressive growth trajectory throughout the year. We are delighted with this acquisition, which continues the expansion of its geographic footprint as well as its client base. There are a number of other targets in the pipeline for 2022, which will help the company maintain this momentum.”

Miss Group was supported on this transaction by:

• Legal advice – Squire Patton Boggs (Giles Chesher, Matt Canipa and Mona Mojtabavi)
• Financial due diligence – EY (Steven Kingham and Jace Swift)
• Corporate advisory – Anecta / Translink Corporate Finance (Fredrik Ullberg, Alex Gut, Sebastian Süllmann and Yannick Staenz

About Miss Group

Founded in 2014, Miss Group is an international web hosting group that offers a range of hosting related services at competitive prices including web hosting, domain registration, VPS, dedicated servers, website builder, SSL-Certificate, SEO Tools, web security and domain management. Miss Group is also an ICANN-accredited Domain Name registrar via Name ISP. Miss Group is a well-established operator in its core markets, with a customer service-oriented model driving industry-leading performance metrics for its >200,000 web hosting customers. The majority of Miss Group is owned by Perwyn, an international private equity and growth equity investor.

About Perwyn

Founded in 2013, Perwyn is a family-backed, international private and growth equity investor. Perwyn works closely with investee companies applying strategic and operational expertise in addition to providing capital. Perwyn is free from the usual private equity funding cycles, focusing above all on our investments rather than fundraising. We approach investment with an evergreen model and believe in genuine partnership with management teams, seeking to facilitate long term growth and development.

There are two main focuses of our business. Perwyn Private Equity is an active lead investor, seeking buyout opportunities in established, growing, cash generative market leaders headquartered in the UK or Western Europe where it can make a material impact on growth and profitability. We invest in businesses with an EV of £/€50-300m, seeking partnership investment support for growth initiatives or transition.  Perwyn Growth Capital invests in growing businesses across the same markets, with a passion for backing entrepreneurs and founders on their winning strategy. We seek primarily growth equity investments of £/€5m-100m.