Vistaprint Hits a Double with Global Acquisition Strategy – March 2015 M&A Activity

Cimpress, parent company of the phenomenal Vistaprint, continued to expand its market into additional countries by acquiring web-to-print companies that serve those countries in their native language. The company moved into France early in March with its acquisition of Exagroup. In what appears to be a departure from Vistaprint’s primary strategy in the US of selling directly to small businesses, the acquired company exclusively serves clients through a network of resellers through its online platform and white-labeled web-based store fronts. Cimpress used this strategy last year to quickly establish an extensive customer base in Italy when it acquired Pixartprinting, a web-to-print company that also uses the reseller channel to reach its customers. 

Cimpress kept running at full speed and secured a second deal in March, reaching southward from its home base in the Netherlands to acquire Austrian web-to-print company Druck.at. The acquired company in German-speaking Austria reaches its customers both through resellers and directly to small and medium business customers. Similar to its deal when it acquired the Brazilian company Printi in October 2014, Cimpress gains an immediate presence in the targeted country’s language, which I suspect is especially critical to successful market penetration when the product itself is the printed word.

For the French connection, Cimpress paid €91.5 million for a 70 percent interest in the company. Based on the reported trailing twelve months revenue of €76 million and €14 million EBITDA (18.4%), Cimpress paid 6.5 times EBITDA for its controlling interest, valuing the total shares of the company at €130.7 million or 9.3 times EBITDA. The sellers have the opportunity to increase the final payout subject to certain benchmarks set for 2017, which could increase the price to within spitting distance of a 10 times multiple. Cimpress will pay the sellers cash at closing.