Eight Advisory advises the OVH founder on his shopping spree

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“We have been fortunate to accompany Octave on various issues since 2019, in particular his investment in Shadow. He is not investing to develop a business, but has a real long-term vision. In this case, with the investment in Qwant, he wants to change his model and his market by offering European independence in his own cloud solutions,” Florent Berckmans, Partner for Strategy and Operations, shares with Consultor.
Qwant, which was founded in 2013 and now employs about a hundred people, is still a loss-maker, even though its turnover has been increasing since 2020: €5.86 million in 2019, €7.5 million in 2020, €11.9 million in 2021. Since 2021, Qwant has been available in all European countries and is in the top 5 search engines available on Android phones.
With the purchase of Qwant (based on an estimated valuation of €150 million), the French entrepreneur intends to create a ‘European champion’ for cloud-based services called Synfonium, 75% owned by Octave and Miroslaw Klaba and 25% by Caisse des Dépôts. At the beginning of 2023, Shadow had already acquired Genymobile (focused on Android solutions).
In this context, Eight Advisory provided a wide range of support, from the strategic part (throughout 2022) to the financial due diligence (with specialised teams), with a Strategy & Operations team, led by Florent Berckmans, with two to three consultants.
“With Octave, we are not bound by the formalism of classic business. We work with all the teams of the companies and take each of the building blocks according to their needs. We worked on the two business models for Shadow and Qwant separately and then on the combined business model, but also on integration, revenue development and synergies. Creating a business plan in this technological environment is not easy because investments are very expensive.”
The transaction is at this stage between signing and closing, expected this summer, for a development of synfonium between 2024 and 2026.