FORUM Family Office acquires 100% of HSH Software GmbH

Transaction message

FORUM Family Office acquires 100% of HSH Software GmbH

FORUM Family Office ("FORUM") has acquired 100% of the shares of HSH Software GmbH ("HSH"), based in Ahrensfelde near Berlin, through its industry holding FORUM Software Mittelstandsholding SE. HSH generated revenue of approximately €21 million in 2018 with approximately 190 employees. The revenue mix in 2018 was as follows:

1. Maintenance 70 %
2. Licences 20 %
3. Project 10%

The revenue mix is strongly driven by recurring revenue, making the company a perfect fit for FORUM's focus on "subscription business".

HSH is the second largest private provider of municipal software in Germany. In the field of population registration, approx. 60 million inhabitants are administered with the main product MESO - with a market share of 72%, HSH is the absolute market leader here.

The VOIS software platform has been marketed since 2016. VOIS bundles the majority of public authority software applications on one platform and thus offers public authorities the opportunity to replace the historically grown fragmentation of software providers in the municipal sector with an integrated solution with a uniform user interface. This is intended to expand the number of specialised procedures covered by HSH in the public administration of the Federal Republic of Germany from the current 2 to a double-digit number.

HSH was founded on 19 February 1991 by Stephan Hauber and his business partners Petra Heller and Monika Stracke. Their entrepreneurial vision at the time was that mainframes in municipal administration would be replaced by PCs. Therefore, they developed a software for compressing large amounts of data for official data . At the turn of the millennium, the second generation of the software (client-server architecture) was then used on a large scale. Since 2016, the third generation of the software has been on the market as a web solution on the self-developed platform VOIS.

FORUM's continuation concept provides for the further marketing of VOIS and the development of further applications, especially for the citizens' bureau. In addition, rounding acquisitions are to expand HSH's field of application. In addition, the strong corporate culture with the central values of employee development, long-term orientation and customer focus is to be maintained.

In terms of personnel, continuity is assured for at least the next 5 years: the two managing directors Stephan Hauber and Petra Heller will remain on board until at least 2024. The same applies to the employees on the second management level. Comment Mr. Hauber:

"We deliberately chose FORUM as HSH's strategic partner because this is the best way for us to guarantee important values such as reliability, a long-term approach and also our own identity as a medium-sized company and to carry them into the future. Reliability was a significant feature of our discussions with Dr. Wittek. Long-term orientation is a declared goal of Forum and of decisive importance for HSH, because we want to be a reliable partner for our employees, partners and customers in the long term. It was also crucial for us to be able to continue our basic ideas on how to manage the company and position it in the market. This, coupled with new impulses and ideas from FORUM, allows us to tackle the next tasks with maximum optimism."

FORUM Family Office is a long-term investor in medium-sized companies. The core is"subscription business" with recurring revenues. Software is a focus activity of FORUM and is to be further expanded. HSH is the second software transaction within the last 9 months. As owners, we contribute our expertise primarily in the areas of corporate development, sales and human resources development. We are looking for majority investments with € 3 million - € 50 million turnover.

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