SoftwareONE CEO hints at further acquisitions as Comparex integration continues

SoftwareONE has claimed it is ahead of schedule in its integration efforts of software licensing peer Comparex.

The Swiss cloud and software firm announced its acquisition of Comparex in October 2018, with the deal finally closing in February last year.

The merger created a licensing behemoth that manages some €10bn in software sales annually, and a workforce of 5,500 in 88 countries globally.

Disclosed in its H1 results published today, SoftwareONE said that it is ahead of schedule in bringing the two firms together.

The Swiss channel giant claims that it has squeezed CHF 32m (€29.78m) in run-rate cost synergies from Comparex during the six-month period, made up of CHF 11m in group functions and CHF 21m through subsidiaries.

The goal is to realise CHF 40m in cost savings. SoftwareONE originally forecast that it would achieve 60 per cent of those savings during its fiscal H1, but today's results show SoftwareONE has instead overachieved at 80 per cent.

CEO Dieter Schlosser also told investors that all parts of the Comparex business have now been migrated onto the same ERP systems as SoftwareONE, describing it as a "big step forward" in its integration efforts.

SoftwareONE's integration of Comparex has been making steady progress over the course of the last two years. The firm named its new CEO at the end of 2018 and then rebranded Comparex to SoftwareONE's colours across 35 locations the following April.

The firm claims that country-specific system migrations are still being carried out, and will take place on a monthly basis throughout 2020.

"From next year onwards when you have a full financial calendar year, having one harmonised process and back office and we will have further traction on the synergies," said Schlosser.

The CEO also hinted that SoftwareONE will begin looking for more scale-oriented acquisitions once Comparex has been fully integrated.

"We will wait until we are through with the Comparex integration before we open the opportunity of acquisitions on scale. We are well on track and once we've done with the integration on Comparex, the window of opportunity for such acquisitions would open up in 2021," he said.

SoftwareONE has already made three acquisitions this year. It bought Dutch software lifecycle management firm B-lay in July, Swiss Microsoft outfit Make IT Noble last month and cloud cost management firm GorillaStack earlier in the year in May.

The Comparex integration update comes as SoftwareONE reveals its financial results for the first six months of the year.

Revenues grew by 5.6 per cent year on year to €3.94bn, while adjusted EBITDA grew by 18.2 per cent annually on a constant currency basis to CHF 120m.

SoftwareONE's share price fell by five per cent this morning as the financial results were published.

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• Topics
• Reseller
• Comparex
• Dieter Schlosser
• Make IT Noble
• solution providers