Press release - 17 October 2023
Investment bank Largillière Finance has advised the iXO Private Equity fund and the founding directors of 1Life on their sale to the Visiativ group, listed on Euronext Growth.
Founded in 2013 in Lyon, 1Life is an ERP integration specialist dedicated to industrial SMEs. With its 80 experts and two solutions, OpenProd and Cegid PMI, 1Life has been supporting more than 1,000 customers /industrial SMEs/ETIs for around ten years. The company has 7 locations in France and achieved sales of €10 million in 2022, of which 50% in sales of value-added services (consulting) and 50% in software on recurring, maintenance and/or subscription models. Since 2017, it had been supported as a minority shareholder by iXO PE, with the two founders of 1Life, Denis Affre and Frédéric Poissant, holding the majority of the capital.
Lyon-based Visiativ, listed on Euronext Growth, is an expert in digital transformation for businesses. It has 23,000 customers, 1,400 employees and sales of €259 million by 2022.
By acquiring a 60% stake in 1Life, Visiativ intends to round out its value proposition and strengthen its “manufacturing” know-how, while broadening its scope of expertise in the ERP segment.
The balance of the capital will be held by Denis Affre and Frédéric Poissant, who will retain their operational roles as Managing Directors of 1Life, now a subsidiary of the Visiativ Group.
At the request of the investment fund, the shareholders and management entrusted the investment bank Largillière Finance with a precise mandate: to identify the best industrial partner to reconcile the interests of the outgoing fund and those of the managing shareholders, who are looking ahead to a new stage of development.
Denis Affre, CEO of 1Life, comments: “We had already collaborated with the Visiativ group, based in Lyon like ourselves, on several commercial partnerships. The complementarity of our business expertise with Visiativ's software solutions opens up great potential for our employees, so that we can continue to provide the best possible service to our customers. We would like to thank Largillière Finance for the quality of their advice and support."
Nathanaël Blanc, Director at Largillière Finance, adds: “This transaction presented a two-fold challenge: to optimize the value of the shares held by all the sellers (IXO PE and minority shareholders), and at the same time to negotiate the capital and operational integration of 1Life's founder-managers. Our expertise in assisting shareholders with different timeframes (funds and management) and our in-depth knowledge of players in the IT sector enabled us to successfully complete this operation in the best interests of all parties”.
With offices in Paris, Lyon, Nantes, Brussels and Geneva, Largillière Finance is an independent investment bank dedicated to assisting managers and shareholders of small and medium-sized companies with their capital transactions: company sales and acquisitions, financing (capital and/or debt), financial engineering (valuation, etc.) and financial strategy.
