Miss Group increases its market leading position in Sweden with latest acquisition
Fast-growing, international web hosting business, Miss Group, has acquired Swedish web hosting business, Cloudnet.
Headquartered in Stockholm, Cloudnet was established in 2010 and has grown to become Sweden's largest managed hosting company specialising in the operating system Linux.
Cloudnet currently services c. 500 SME customers primarily located in Sweden. In the year ending December 2021, Cloudnet reported revenues of SEK25m.
The company will join Miss Group’s growing team of over 300 people, adding to its customer base of >700,000 businesses globally in the Nordic and DACH regions, Europe and North America.
Fredrik Björklund, co-founder and CEO of Miss Group, said: “Cloudnet has established a fantastic reputation in the Swedish market, not only for its knowledge base and expertise but also for its customer service-led approach to supporting SME customers as their businesses grow. This is an approach that resonates with Miss Group’s own customer service-oriented model and where Cloudnet’s expertise will complement our offering. As part of Miss Group, Cloudnet will have unrivalled access to our international network of technical expertise, as well as a leading range of products and services to offer its customers.”
Magnus and Anders, co-founders of Cloudnet, said: “This is a great opportunity to strengthen Cloudnet’s offering, both in terms of customer service and the types of products Cloudnet can deliver. We are happy to see how similar both companies’ passion for providing great customer support is, and we’re sure this will further improve the experience for our existing and future customers.”
Cloudnet’s co-founders Magnus and Anders will both leave the business post acquisition, with day-to-day management transitioning to Miss Group’s established management team in Sweden.
Miss Group’s ambitious growth trajectory saw proforma revenues for the year ending December 2021 reach €66 million with a 43% EBITDA margin. With strong organic growth and future acquisitions, the Group anticipates reaching €100 million turnover and 45% EBITDA margin within the next 12 months.
Fredrik Björklund added: “We have established a healthy acquisition pipeline for 2022 that will continue to accelerate our international growth, as well as adding new products and services to our portfolio that will further strengthen our offer of providing best-in-class web services and support to help SME businesses expand their global reach.”
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. CloudNet takes the total number of acquisitions completed under Perwyn ownership to ten, and the total number of acquisitions completed by Miss Group since 2018 to 19.
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 and Sebastian Süllmann)
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 >700,000 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.
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