French digital business services provider Teleperformance SE and private equity firm Blackstone Group Inc. are planning separate bids for Everise Holdings, an IT services business owned by Brookfield Asset Management, two people aware of the transaction said.
Brookfield has hired Morgan Stanley to conduct the sale and hopes to raise around $1.4 billion, the people cited above said on the condition of anonymity. The bids are due later this week and may see interest from other private equity firms as well.
Spokespeople for Brookfield and Blackstone declined to comment. Teleperformance and Morgan Stanley did not respond to requests for comment.
In 2016, Everstone Capital, a private equity firm focused on India and Southeast Asia, along with Sunrise BPO, acquired US-based business process outsourcing company C3 to create Everise. Everstone sold the business to Brookfield in 2020 for approximately $450 million, according to media reports. Everstone, which bought back a 20% stake from a different fund, did not respond to a request for comment.
Everise primarily serves healthcare, transport, logistics, insurance, financial services and tech businesses, according to its website. The company’s Ebitda (earnings before interest tax, depreciation and amortization) is up 40% since January, one of the two people cited above said.
Moody’s Investors Service on 22 May said Everise had reported a “strong operating performance and faster-than-expected improvement in financial metrics”.
“For 2023, Moody’s projects financial leverage to decline below 2.5x, supported by at least 10% organic growth driven by expanding wallet share with existing clients and new logo wins. Moody’s also expects free cash flow generation of at least 5% relative to debt for 2023 despite rising interest rates,” the rating company said.
IT services deals have seen significant investor interest in 2023. On 15 May, Apax Partners said it signed a definitive agreement to acquire travel and logistics service provider IBS Software for $450 million. Engineering tech services provider Quest Global Solutions is close to a deal with Carlyle Group, Mint reported earlier this month.
For Teleperformance, this won’t be its first acquisition in India. In 2018, it acquired Intelenet Global Services from Blackstone for $1 billion. Bhupinder Singh, previously CEO of Intelenet, is now in charge of group transformation at Teleperformance.
In 2021, Teleperformance was also among the bidders for cloud and customer services tech provider Hexaware Technologies, which private equity firm Carlyle Group eventually acquired for $3 billion. Previously, Teleperformance told analysts and investors that it expects to make acquisitions in emerging markets to drive growth and compensate for reducing growth in developed markets.
The French business bought rival Majorel in a €3 billion deal on 26 April.
