Telefónica Tech acquires BE-terna Group from Deutsche Private Equity

Telefónica Tech’s acquisition of BE-terna initiates the next important step in the development of the group as a key player and partner in driving digital transformation.

Today it was announced that DPE Deutsche Private Equity (DPE) has sold BE-terna Group to Telefónica Tech. This deal is the next step in the development of the BE-terna Group after its strong expansion as part of its internationalization strategy over the last three years.

With more than 1,000 employees in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Adriatic region and the Nordics, and an annual turnover of 121 million Euros in 2021, BE-terna strives to continue its rapid growth in the years to come. Even throughout the pandemic BE-terna kept a fast pace and managed to support its customers in their digitalisation projects and migration to the cloud.

Telefónica Tech is the leading company in digital transformation. The company offers a wide range of services and integrated technological solutions in Cyber Security, Cloud, IoT, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, and Blockchain. The acquisition of BE-terna reinforces Telefónica Tech’s commitment to becoming a leading player in Tech Services in Europe, enabling the next-generation IT services integrator to significantly increase its geographic scale and Professional and Managed Services capabilities across Europe, consolidating its position as one of the top leading Microsoft Cloud solutions providers in the region. For BE-terna, the backing of Telefónica Tech will enable the group to make strategic and long-term investments in recruitment and development on a significant scale, and further strengthen its market position. The acquisition also demonstrates the confidence of investors in BE-terna’s ability to implement large-scale digitalisation projects.

Frank Müller, Partner and Managing Director at DPE, said: “After three years of successfully pursuing an internationalization strategy by expanding the business into the Adriatic region, the Benelux and the Nordic regions, BE-terna with its unrivalled expertise in every IT-product of the Microsoft family is now prepared to benefit from a vast platform such as Telefonica Tech. During DPE’s ownership, sales increased by +70%, EBITDA by +50% and FTE´s increased from c.500 to >1,000 fostered by organic growth as well as significant M&A activity – an essential part of DPE´s investment philosophy”.

Christian Kranebitter, Founder of BE-terna, said: “This is a key turning point in BE-terna’s journey, and we thank Deutsche Private Equity, and in particular Dr. Frank Mueller, for the invaluable support over the last three years to get us to where we are today. Becoming part of Telefónica Tech is the logical next step in the development of the BE-terna Group. Since our founding, we have strived to be a stable and reliable long-term partner for our customers. Many customers are currently moving more and more business-critical workloads to the cloud. Combining our existing solutions with Telefónica Tech’s offering creates a solution portfolio that ideally supports this transformation”.

Bernhard Lang, Chief Executive Officer at BE-terna, said: “The offerings from Telefonica Tech and
BE-terna are very complementary and will empower us to serve existing and new customers with all key technologies and solutions that are required to design, deliver and operate a successful digitalisation strategy“.

The closing of the transaction will take place in the coming weeks, following clearance by the German competition authority.