Afinum ended the third quarter of this year with two strategic add-on acquisitions to Afinum 9’s existing portfolio companies, Synaforce and GS Swiss.

The management teams of the existing Afinum portfolio put strong emphasis on progressing value creation whilst new deal flow was analyzed by the Afinum team with high discipline towards specific verticals and thus consciousness to the current macro environment. The recapitalization of It Works group demonstrated our ability to return funds to our investors, even in a challenging financing environment. The teams currently work on further add-ons, but we also see a good likelihood of signing another platform deal before year-end.

Attracting and developing talent remains a constant priority for us, so that we are happy to announce four new joiners to our team. Frederick and Alejandro have already joined the Munich-based team and during Q4 two more colleagues will join the team.

Our team has also been present at various industry conferences and investor summits this year. This will continue in Q4 with this year’s SuperInvestor Conference (14th-17th November) in Zurich. We have decided to use the occasion and host a reception on November 13th (starting 7 pm), on the eve of the event, at our new offices in Dufourstrasse 48. This aims to offer investors and advisors the opportunity to meet our new joiners as well as large parts of our leadership team, so that in addition to Dr. Philipp Schülin, our Munich-based Partners Dr. Gernot Eisinger, Kai Roolf, Burkhard v. Wangenheim and our CFO Anton Bergman from our Munich office will also be present. If interested, this is your opportunity to schedule direct meetings with us during the event, so please feel encouraged to get in touch via info@afinum.de. Invitations will go out over the coming days.

Portfolio News

GS Swiss extends its stronghold in the growing electronic medical device supplier market | September
Afinum 9 invests in Hofstetter PCB AG (Hofstetter), the leading European provider of printed circuit boards plating and special final finishing services. Together with its 2022 investment in GS Swiss, Afinum hereby extends its stronghold in the growing electronic medical device supplier market.
Hofstetter adds crucial technological know-how and hence enforces the position of the group as a leading electronic medical device supplier. Hofstetter and GS Swiss will continue to operate as independent companies within a common group.
Hofstetter (founded in 1980) operates with a workforce of around 80 people across three sites in Switzerland (Küssnacht am Rigi) and Germany (Lörrach, Herrenberg). The business has grown into the leading full-service provider for printed circuit board plating and special final finishing services in Europe serving customers in high-precision industries. Management plans to continue the successful growth path by building out the company’s technology leadership, expanding sales activities as well as selective add-on acquisitions.

It Works group returns significant funds in challenging financing market | August
Afinum 8 portfolio company It Works group has successfully repaid all former acquisition financing loans and returned significant funds to Afinum 8 during August 2023, following a successful refinancing with existing bank partners.
The refinancing is testimony to the company’s strong historic cashflow performance and its resilience throughout the Covid-19 crisis, times of high energy prices and overall economic uncertainties. It also represents a significant step forward towards optimally igniting It Works group’s next growth phase, based on the proprietary ”Locatrics” technology and platform, developed and built out over the last years, creating the market’s first fully digitized and fully independent offering for best performing public media campaigns across traditional OOH, digital OOH and mobile marketing

Synaforce continues active buy-and-build with acquisition of LANx | July
Afinum 9 portfolio company synaforce invests in LANx GmbH (LANx), a highly specialized, regional provider of cloud services, managed hosting and IT security. In addition to the locations in Hofkirchen, Mainz, Hamburg and Waldburg, synaforce is now also present in Munich. Building on the LANx solution portfolio, synaforce will further strengthen its competencies in the areas of private and public cloud, i.e. virtual servers, IaaS, cloud backup and recovery BaaS.
In 2022, Afinum has invested in synaforce (formerly Hartl Group), a provider of high-end cloud, data center and software solutions with a clear focus on sustainability, maximum availability and data security. LANx is the fourth add-on acquisition to synaforce within 12 months since inception of the buy and build strategy. Like all other add-on acquisitions LANx will be operationally and legally integrated into synaforce.

Team

Afinum welcomes two new team members, strengthening our Munich-based deal team as well as our ESG practice. Two more colleagues will join during Q4 further building up our Swiss and German offices.

Frederick Held has joined the investment team as an analyst. Previously he was at a mid cap private equity firm and brings additional experience from various internships in the private equity field.

Alejandro Pinto-Kayser has started in the role of Risk & ESG Manager. For this role, he adds valuable expertise from previous roles.