The Bertelsmann boss has sold the call center holding Majorel.
(Photo: Bertelsmann)
Dusseldorf Bertelsmann sells its call center investment Majorel to the market leader Teleperformance from France. The two companies announced this on Wednesday. The previous shareholders will receive a total of two billion euros in cash and one billion euros in Teleperformance shares. Bertelsmann last held 39.5 percent of the shares and thus generated around 1.2 billion euros.
Both companies are active in the so-called customer experience business. They manage the relationships between companies and their end customers. These can be classic call center functions, but also measures to acquire customers or moderate discussions on social media platforms. Majorel is active in 45 countries and 70 languages for around 500 customers.
Retirement planned for a long time
Bertelsmann boss Thomas Rabe has been planning to withdraw from the call center business for some time. The industry is under pressure to consolidate. Running call centers is labor intensive and expensive. In addition, customers are increasingly demanding large and global providers. Even if Majorel has grown a lot lately, it is considered too small.
In the future, more and more call center interactions will be handled via automated technologies, but this requires high investments. These can be better managed by larger companies. In 2022, Majorel recorded sales of 2.1 billion euros with 82,000 employees. Teleperformance is significantly larger, has revenues of over seven billion euros and has 410,000 employees.
Bertelsmann wanted to merge Majorel with French competitor Sitel, twice the size, last June. The merger, which was actually fixed, failed in the fall, apparently there were disputes with the owners of Sitel, the French billionaire family Mulliez.
Several prestige projects failed
In any case, four prestige projects by Bertelsmann boss Thomas Rabe with a total volume of five billion euros had failed. The takeover of the US publishers Simon & Schuster by the Bertelsmann book subsidiary Penguin Random House fell through, as did merger projects in the French and Dutch television markets. Bertelsmann was also recently criticized because the company wants to cut 700 of the 1,900 jobs at the Hamburg publishing company Gruner + Jahr.
The sale of Majorel, which is still subject to regulatory issues, would again be a sign of success for Rabe. He says: “In the four years since it was founded, Majorel’s sales alone have almost doubled.” He had tried to sell the business before, but could not find a buyer at the price he had in mind.
There were different reactions on the stock exchange: the titles of the Luxembourg-based Majorel rose by almost 40 percent to 29 euros by midday and thus approached Teleperformance’s offer of 30 euros per Majorel share certificate. The titles of the French call center operator, meanwhile, fell by 17.8 percent to their lowest level in more than five months.
Majorel was founded in 2018. Bertelsmann merged the call centers of its services subsidiary Arvato with those of its Moroccan partner Saham in 2018 and listed them on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange under the name Majorel in autumn 2021. As a result, Bertelsmann reduced its stake from 50 to less than 40 percent.
The highly fragmented call center industry continues to consolidate as a result of the recent merger. So far, the ten largest call center operators have not even achieved a market share of 30 percent.
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