Ströer Digital Ventures acquires Scandinavian market leader for big data analytics in the educational sector

More than 12 million Euro revenue contribution and 2.5 to 3 million Euro Operational EBITDA in 2016 expected

Yesterday the Ströer division Digital Ventures signed the contract of purchase and takes over a 51-percent-majority of Conexus – the other 49 percent remain with the founders. The Norwegian company is specialized in digital, big data driven educational solutions. The Scandinavian market and research leader features a pioneering technological infrastructure and is being able to picture complex value chains and analyze big data in highspeed. Conexus deliver trendsetting infrastructure solutions in learning analytics and professional learning for the educational sector, already in use by 90 percent of all schools in Norway. The tools are based on scalable technology that can be adapted to different learning contexts. Conexus focuses on learning big data analytics, that uses intelligent data, learner-produced data, and analysis models to discover information and connections for predicting and advising people’s learning. These infrastructural solutions support structure for existing educational models and help in exploring how learning analytics can restructure the process of teaching and learning.

Ströer is expecting significant synergies to its own digital business segments in Germany. In the future, Conexus is going to develop educational digital infrastructure solutions, for example for t-online.de, Germany´s online portal with the widest reach. In addition, the proprietary big data analytics technology is going to be used in Ströer´s ad marketing as well.

”We are proud, that the successful founders of Conexus – looking for partners for the internationalization – decided to go and work with us. We are scouting a lot of interesting assets and only a few match our criteria – Conexus does“, says Udo Müller, CEO Ströer SE. ”Conexus, as a classical hidden champion, developed well in a demarcated market niche, grows since founding more than 30 percent year on year organically and offers great synergy potential to our existing portfolio. This company gains an enormous potential and we expect strong and sustainable growth.“

Ströer expects revenue contribution of more than 12 million Euro and an Operational EBITDA contribution of between 2.5 and 3 million Euro in 2016. The price of this asset is based on an 8-times multiple of the expected EBITDA in 2016. The structural growing, sustainable and data-driven business model is meeting all Ströer´s criteria for international acquisitions. Conexus is the market leader in its market niche and the business model is scalable and transferable to other countries and markets.

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