SoftwareONE heading for multi-billion pound valuation

The Microsoft partner's first round of pre-bookings sold out within three hours

Swiss giant SoftwareONE's is heading towards a £2.5bn (€2.9bn) valuation after the first round of pre-bookings for its impending IPO sold out within three hours.

One of the largest Microsoft resellers in the world, SoftwareONE intends to float on the SIX Swiss Exchange later this month.

Up to 44.3 million shares were released in its first round, with its share price range set at between Sfr16.50 (€15.02) to Sfr21 (€19.10), which would put the firm on track to achieve a market cap of between Sfr2.5bn (€2.27bn) and Sfr3.2bn (€2.91bn).

Investment publication Global Capital reported that the evaluation is roughly 17.5 to 22.5 times what the company had predicted.

The software licensing behemoth first revealed its plans to go public in Q4, two weeks ago.

The IPO will consist solely of secondary shares from founding shareholders, KKR, Comparex investor Peruni and management, with founding shareholders expected to maintain the largest stake.

SoftwareONE's plans to go public comes eight months after its mammoth takeover of Comparex completed.

At the time SoftwareONE claimed that the merger would create a licensing powerhouse that would manage €10bn in software sales.

However, its competitors told CRN' s sister publication CPI that they expect the process to become mired in a long, drawn-out integration.

The CEO of Nordics software licensing partner Crayon, Rune Syversen, called his rival's merger "one of the biggest opportunities we've seen over the last five years."