North West tech firm is snapped up by global giant in £88m deal
A tech business based in Warrington which was set up 16 years ago has been snapped up for £88m by a multi-national firm.
IESA, a B2B digital disruptor which offers services to manufacturing, process and production firms, has been bought by technology giant Electrocomponents.
Founded in 2002 and based in the Birchwood Science Park IESA employs 500 people.
IESA’s services allow clients to improve their efficiency and consolidate their indirect procurement vendor base via cloud-enabled marketplace technology.
The firm’s award winning MyMRO technology platform was developed with the aim of meeting the indirect procurement challenges faced by large businesses.
The acquisition will boost Electrocomponents’ value-added services offering, giving it additional capabilities to service larger corporate clients who choose to outsource their MRO and other indirect purchases and inventory management.
IESA and its clients will benefit from the scale and international reach of the new owners.
IESA management carried out a management buy out in May 2012 supported by Gresham Private Equity and have grown its revenues four fold as well as completing the acquisition of Active Industrial Supply in 2017.
IESA chief executive Glenn Timms, said: “We are excited to become part of the Electrocomponents Group and this represents the start of a third chapter for our organisation.
“Since launching as a digital disruptor and family business in 2002 and having an undertaken a management buy out in 2012, we are proud to have become a multi-national and multi £100m turnover business operating in six countries.
“This is testament to both our outstanding employees’ hard work and the faith and trust our clients and vendor partners have placed in us, together with the support and encouragement of our private equity investor Gresham who have been an invaluable partner over the last six years and we publicly express our gratitude accordingly.”
Manchester based investment bank GCA Altium advised on the deal.
Mr Timms added: “As a proud new member of the Electrocomponents family we will be retaining our existing leadership team and will continue to operate as an independent unit, which is crucial to our business model.
“We will have significant opportunities to leverage the Group’s global infrastructure, resources and digital capability to drive faster growth and benefits for our clients, vendors and employees and are looking forward to the next phase of our development.”
Simon Inchley, chief executive of Gresham commented “We are delighted with our investment and successful sale of IESA and feel the business is now well placed for its next phase of growth under the ownership of Electrocomponents.
“It has been a pleasure working with management and we look forward to watching its continued progress and wish them every success for the future.”
GCA Altium chief executive Phil Adams advised the shareholders on the sale, supported by vice president Tom Battersby and analyst Durgesh Panchani.
Phil Adams said: “We are delighted to have been able to work alongside Gresham and the IESA management team.
“With its extensive global coverage, Electrocomponents represents an excellent partner with whom IESA can accelerate its own international ambitions, leveraging its digital platform.”
Deloitte provided vendor due diligence on the transaction.
IESA has approximately 27,000 suppliers and its client base is primarily large national and multi-national manufacturing, assembly and process manufacturing businesses, in Germany, Ireland, Singapore, Slovakia, Sweden and the UK.
Electrocomponents, through its brands RS Components (RS) and Allied Electronics and Automation (Allied), is the global distributor for engineers. It offers more than 500,000 industrial and electronic products, sourced from 2,500 leading suppliers, and provides a wide range of value-added services to over one million customers.
With operations in 32 countries, it trades through multiple channels and ships around 50,000 parcels a day.
