The Asia-based private equity, Navis Capital has completed an investment in Software Combined.
Software Combined is one of Australasia’s only vertical market software (VMS) consolidators, and Navis sees a strong opportunity to build an acquisition platform that can consolidate the sector.
To recap, Software Combined is a leader in identifying and acquiring Australian and New Zealand-based niche and B2B industry-specific software companies, examining around 150 companies each year. It provides owners or managers of software businesses with access to capital or liquidity options to drive innovation, while protecting the businesses they have built.
The Software Combined team is lead by three co-founders Evert Den Hollander (CEO), Niek Hoogenhout (CIO) and Stefan Jansen (CRO), who are a team of established senior executives with decades of highly relevant experience across mergers and acquisitions (M&A), consulting, fintech, software and cloud operations.
It aims to be the acquiror of choice for mature businesses providing mission critical, highly sticky, vertical market software. These businesses typically have stable and recurring earnings, consistent and attractive margins and high free cash flow generation. Its platform own and manage these businesses and look to efficiently redeploy the available free cash flows into new acquisitions.
Software Combined will serve a critical role in providing an opportunity for founders of software companies to exit their businesses that have no natural acquiror, with the knowledge that the company they’ve built will continue as planned, even when capital market options are uncertain. It will be one of the only vertical-agnostic acquirors, allowing it to be highly selective in sourcing acquisitions.
The initial portfolio for Software Combined includes companies operating across mining, creative and construction industries and document management workloads. Software Combined will continue to build around these assets and also look to new vertical opportunities.
Navis’ investment will help Software Combined build a systematized acquisition platform with a highly repeatable M&A capability and support the business in accelerating its aggregation strategy.
“Navis is extremely excited to partner with the Software Combined team and work with them on the next step of their growth journey. We see a significant opportunity for a high quality management team to grow and acquire vertical market software businesses in the Australian and New Zealand market,” Phil Latham, Senior Partner at Navis Capital commented.
“We see fantastic growth potential ahead of Software Combined, and an opportunity for Navis to add value to the Software Combined platform. Navis have deep experience in buy-and-build models and look forward to supporting the Software Combined team in delivering on their growth strategy,” Johnny Zhang, Partner at Navis Capital commented.
“Our software aggregation strategy is unique in Australia through our acquisition, business support and optimisation plan for each business. We’re focused on profitable and stable software businesses that are operating in niche markets with a limited number of players. Many of these businesses have been operating successfully for several years but are joining Software
Combined to help them deliver on their long-term growth plans. We partner with these businesses to optimise operations and maximise growth while preserving the company that the founders built,” Evert Den Hollander, CEO at Software Combined commented
