With the merger of Apleona and Gegenbauer, a more powerful group was formed in the building management sector.
(Photo: dpa)
Dusseldorf, Frankfurt The building management company Apleona, which emerged from the Bilfinger Group, is merging with the family-run competitor Gegenbauer in order to expand the product range and sales area. The companies announced this on Monday.
According to financial circles, the shareholders around Werner Gegenbauer will hold a good 20 percent stake in Apleona as part of the transaction. However, the majority remains with Apleona owner PAI, a French financial investor. No information was given on the assessment.
Apleona and Gegenbauer offer maintenance and repair services for building technology as well as building cleaning, security, reception and courier services. With the 18,000 employees and 900 million euros turnover of the Gegenbauer Group, the group will in future generate around 3.5 billion euros a year with 40,000 employees throughout Europe.
The business is profitable. According to financial circles, Apleona has a return (EBITA margin) of around seven percent.
Gegenbauer is a family company with almost 100 years of history. The family had already sold 77 percent of the company to the EnBW subsidiary Salamander in 2001, but Werner Gegenbauer bought back all the shares from 2004 to 2009. He was most recently Honorary Chairman of the company’s Supervisory Board, and his three daughters are majority owners.
Strengthening in important segments
The financial investor PAI acquired Apleona in 2020 from the Swedish private equity company EQT. Apleona had bought the latter four years earlier from the industrial service provider Bilfinger. With the Gegenbauer transaction, the company will be strengthened both geographically and in the important segment of technical services, i.e. the maintenance of heating, air conditioning, elevators, escalators and security technology.
In the future under one roof.
With the deal, PAI is also preparing Apleona for resale. For the majority shareholder PAI, both an IPO of Apleona and a sale to a competitor such as Spie, Bouygues, ISS, CBRE or JLL are conceivable options, said a person familiar with the process. Other private equity or infrastructure investors may also be interested in buying Apleona. First of all, however, the integration of the two companies is in the foreground.
PAI Germany boss Ralph Heuwing explained that PAI will support Apleona in consolidating the still fragmented European facility management market. Under the aegis of PAI, Apleona has already taken over five smaller companies, including Siemens Building Management & Services from Austria with sales of EUR 75 million a year ago.
“Our customers are increasingly looking for professional outsourcing of integrated real estate services, bundling ever larger service packages, including cross-border ones, as well as digital solutions and products for energy saving and decarbonization in existing buildings, which is being exacerbated by the ongoing energy crisis,” explained Apleona CEO Jochen Keysberg.
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