Verdane realises holding in Scanmarket after more than doubling ARR in three years

Verdane, the European specialist growth equity investor, has announced the realisation of its investment in Scanmarket, a software provider that develops advanced solutions to meet the needs of procurement, legal and finance professionals, to Unit4, a leader in enterprise cloud applications for mid-market people-centric organisations. Over the past three years, in partnership with Verdane, Scanmarket’s annual recurring revenue (“ARR”) has more than doubled, and employee headcount grew from 39 in four locations to 101 in ten locations.

Since the start of its partnership with Verdane in 2019, when Verdane acquired a significant majority shareholding in the Company, Scanmarket has developed into a strongly performing and highly sophisticated Source-to-Contract (“S2C”) software business platform. The Company provides a convenient and cost-efficient solution for businesses to manage and streamline their operations, and helps them reduce their overall operational costs. Following its investment, Verdane and company management focused on growth initiatives, including expanding its product offering, strengthening its leadership team, and bolstering its R&D functions through its development team and in-house artificial intelligence (“AI”) capabilities. With the acquisitions of MIA Data in August 2020 and Symfact in October 2021, Scanmarket broadened its product offering through enhancing its expertise within spend analytics, AI, contract lifecycle management and risk & compliance.

Scanmarket is now a global market challenger within its niche, with offices in ten locations globally, and the Company has managed to more than double ARR between 2019 and 2021. Scanmarket has grown significantly, in particular in the US. Customers include Emirates Flight Catering, Associated British Foods and Grundfos. The S2C market is currently expanding driven by strong underlying trends, such as growing digitalisation and sector consolidation, as well as increased demand for digital solutions to manage risk and compliance. Scanmarket is well-positioned to continue to capitalise on this in the coming years.

Nils Bouchet, Investment Professional at Verdane, said: “We are thrilled to have achieved significant progress together with Scanmarket over the past couple years. Verdane has successfully supported management in rebranding the Company into a world-class SaaS business that is backed by an exceptional team. Scanmarket has grown from 39 employees across four locations, to 101 across 10 locations, expanding the team’s ability to help businesses across the world efficiently manage their operations. I am confident that Scanmarket can fulfil its potential to become a leader within its market and I look forward to seeing the team’s continued progress. It has been a pleasure working with Scanmarket and I wish the Company the best of luck during this next stage of its growth journey.’’

Betina Nygaard, Chief Executive Officer at Scanmarket, said: “The past three years have been transformative for Scanmarket, and we could not have had a better partner than Verdane on this particular stage of our growth journey. The S2C market has grown tremendously over the past decade, and as macro trends such as digitalisation continue to change the way businesses operate, Scanmarket is perfectly positioned to leverage this growth in coming years in our continued growth with our new partner, Unit4. It has been a pleasure to work alongside the Verdane team, and we would like to thank them for their support since 2019.’’

Verdane’s investment in Scanmarket builds on its strong record partnering with tech-enabled and software businesses, with over 30 software businesses in its current portfolio. The realisation of Verdane’s stake in Scanmarket follows its exit from Clausion, a provider of cloud-based corporate performance management solutions and services, to insightsoftware earlier this month.

The financial terms of the transaction are not being disclosed.