Visma eyes 2023 IPO after share sale values firm at $19b

OSLO: Norwegian sotware services provider Visma said it could carry out an initial public offering in 2023 to list its shares on Euronext’s Oslo stock exchange.

Visma, majority owned by private equity firm Hg, said late on Thursday that a group of institutional investors had bought stakes in the firm, valuing it at 165 billion Norwegian crowns ($19 billion).

“We are considering an IPO during 2023, of course given that market conditions are favourable. The Oslo Stock Exchange could be a good option,” a company spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

Visma provides business sotware such as accounting packages across much of Europe, delivered through cloud computing, and has seen 20 years of uninterrupted revenue growth.

“The future looks bright for the growth of digital services, as businesses increasingly see the value of cloud solutions to handle their most important business processes,” Visma’s Chief Executive Merete Hverven said in a statement.

Visma said on Thursday that Aeternum Capital, the Government Pension Fund Norway (Folketrygdfondet) and Vind had each taken stakes of between 0.4% and 0.6 per cent in a sale of existing shares, joining a list of owners that also includes Warburg Pincus and Singapore’s GIC.

ABG Sundal Collier and Goldman Sachs International acted as joint placement agents in the share transaction.

Visma is a privately held company based in Oslo (Norway). The owners are: Hg and coinvestors (48.9 per cent), Cinven (17.1 per cent), Intermediate Capital Group (7.6 per cent) and Montagu (6.2 per cent). The Visma management owns 6.6 per cent of the company.

The company provides business sotware and IT related development and consultancy. The company has 900,000 customers with the vast majority in Northern Europe. It has more than 11,500 employees and the net revenue amounted to NOK 15,027million in 2019.