12 July 2017

ARTHOS advises XOVI on its sale to Plesk

Global expansion of SEO Analytics Software Business
Plesk, the leading WebOps platform to build, secure and run websites, applications and cloud businesses, today announced that it has acquired Germany-based XOVI, a market leading SEO software.

ARTHOS acted as exclusive financial adviser to the shareholder of XOVI GmbH in this transaction. ARTHOS provided full M&A sell-side advisory services including analyzing and approaching national and international potential strategic partners together with AICA partner firms, and driving the subsequent M&A process including co-ordination of the due diligence and leading negotiations of commercial terms of all agreements.

Using XOVI, customers in over 196 countries are monitoring and optimizing their activities in search engines and social media. With over 250,000 projects, XOVI is a leading software used to analyze websites as well as competitors. XOVI employs a team of 25 people at their headquarters in Cologne, Germany.

Plesk is taking over 100% of the shares of XOVI for an undisclosed amount. The clear strategy of Plesk is to extend the business activities of XOVI into its international channel. The XOVI brand, the XOVI products and the headquarter in Cologne will be extended to support the expansion plans of Plesk.

“We are very happy to have XOVI and their compelling SEO & social analytics platform on board.”, says Nils Hueneke, Plesk CEO. “This will not only help the fast-growing community of more than 250,000 additional Web Professionals who are already using Plesk today, but also their end customers who will benefit from the additional and integrated XOVI extension to market their services online using a state-of-the-art marketing platform. XOVI will be deeply integrated with Plesk on a technical level and become an essential part of our growth strategy to sell pre-configured targeted solutions on top of any private or public cloud service provider. Both Plesk and XOVI are very excited to launch these new offerings shortly”.

Maik Benske, CEO XOVI comments: “Joining Plesk will allow us to combine our strengths and drive mutual growth internationally. End customers will benefit from all Plesk core features and the rich extension catalog whereas the Plesk Partner Channel can enrich their targeted solutions with our compelling SEO and social software enabling their customers to stay ahead of the competition and sell successfully in the cloud.”

Plesk is committed to driving growth and primarily focusing on pre-configured targeted solutions through Plesk Extensions. Plesk Extensions are complementary software services that are deeply integrated into the lightweight Plesk core and can be activated with just one click. Any Plesk edition can be tuned into a targeted solution by adding as many extensions from the Plesk Extension Catalog, i.e. mass-managing multiple WordPress instances on the Plesk server including but not limited to the set-up of a secure staging environment to test new or modify existing websites.

About Plesk
Plesk is a global software company with more than 200 employees and an annual revenue of USD 30M in 2016. With over 377,000 server installations and 11 Million hosted websites, Plesk is the leading platform to build, secure and run websites and applications in the cloud. Founded in 1999 Plesk operates as an independent company since May 1, 2017 and is part of Oakley Capital, a leading UK-based private equity fund with over USD 1.6B under management.
www.plesk.com

About XOVI
XOVI is a leading SEO and social software with over 250,000 projects in over 196 countries. With XOVI, businesses of all sizes stay ahead of the competition by using XOVI for making better decisions for SEO, SEM, social media and affiliate marketing.
www.xovi.de

About ARTHOS
ARTHOS is an independent M&A advisory firm and specialist for digital media, IT and industrial technologies based in Munich. Since 2003, ARTHOS services customers on the buy- and sell-side regarding the acquisition or disposal of companies and business units worldwide. The partners of ARTHOS so far have successfully closed over 150 M&A transactions. ARTHOS is member of AICA – the global Alliance of International Corporate Advisers.