EQT, Kühne Holding to acquire 35% stake in Flix – Silicon Canals

Munich-based Flix SE, a journey expertise firm, introduced on Thursday that EQT Group and Kühne Holding have acquired a 35 per cent minority stake price round €1B.

This funding values the corporate at over €3B, stories Bloomberg. 

As a part of this funding, shares can even be bought from current shareholders to ascertain a long-term anchor holding in Flix.

The transaction is pending customary situations and regulatory approvals earlier than its completion.

“We’re delighted to welcome EQT Future and Kühne Holding as robust and purpose-driven buyers with confirmed monitor information of constructing upon sustainable long-term funding methods. Their capital and know-how might be a powerful asset to our firm’s general strategic imaginative and prescient. We couldn’t ask for higher companions to embark on the following chapter of Flix’s journey”, says André Schwämmlein, CEO and Co-Founding father of Flix.

30% enhance in complete income

The funding comes at a time when Flix is experiencing important progress and strategic growth.

In 2023, the corporate achieved a 30 per cent enhance in complete income, reaching €2B for the primary time, and recorded an adjusted EBITDA of €104M.

This progress permits Flix to concentrate on increasing its international footprint, revolutionising the North American bus market, and scaling FlixTrain to fulfill the rising demand for different rail providers in Germany.

To additional strengthen its geographical presence, Flix has lately entered two of crucial bus markets worldwide — Chile and India.

The corporate’s international footprint now stretches throughout 43 nations worldwide.

Moreover, FlixBus is considerably increasing its providers within the UK, Portugal, and Ukraine and has launched in Norway and Finland.

The buyers

Kühne Holding AG, primarily based in Switzerland, focuses on investments within the logistics and transport sector. It holds a majority stake in Kühne+Nagel Worldwide AG and is the most important single shareholder of Hapag-Lloyd AG, Deutsche Lufthansa AG, and Brenntag SE.

Dominik de Daniel, CEO of Kühne Holding AG, feedback, “Flix is driving the following technology of collective transport. The Kühne Holding is proud to actively help them as a strategic associate of their subsequent section of growth. Over the previous few months, we’ve established an ideal relationship with the colleagues of EQT Future. We have now nice confidence in André Schwämmlein and his workforce and really a lot look ahead to supporting Flix’s future in a helpful partnership.”

Karl Gernandt, Chairman Kühne Holding AG, provides, “As one of many largest strategic buyers within the transport and mobility sector, the Kühne Holding is now taking an extra step into the marketplace for collective transport by bus. With Flix’s confirmed asset-light working mannequin, we see nice synergies with our different investments within the transport sector. Moreover, we need to help the growth technique of their worldwide community. We’re constructing on the nice successes that Flix has achieved in establishing the bus because the main sustainable technique of transport – for greater than a decade in Europe and now additionally abroad.”

EQT is a purpose-driven international funding organisation with €242B in complete belongings below administration €132B in fee-generating belongings below administration), inside two enterprise segments – Personal Capital and Actual Property.

EQT owns portfolio corporations and belongings in Europe, Asia-Pacific, and the Americas and helps them in attaining sustainable progress, operational excellence, and market management.

“EQT Future backs high-quality, rising corporations which have the potential to be sustainability leaders of their fields. Flix is the proper instance of this. We’re deeply impressed by what Andréand his workforce have constructed, having developed Flix from a startup into a transparent international market chief, working in 43 nations,” says Andreas Aschenbrenner, Founding Accomplice and Deputy Head of the EQT Future advisory workforce. 

“For us at EQT, it’s at all times about offering greater than capital. We’re proud to associate with Kühne Holding, one of many main transportation and logistics buyers, and along with André and his workforce, we’re excited to help Flix’s strategic progress agenda over the long run. We intention to make sure Flix’s low-carbon resolution to long-distance journey reaches much more folks the world over and consider that Flix is on a path to being the category-defining participant in mass floor transportation, with enormous potential to turn out to be a family identify within the business and past,” provides Aschenbrenner.