ZURICH (Reuters) – Adecco Group has agreed to buy AKKA Technologies in a deal worth 2 billion euros ($2.4 billion) on an enterprise value basis, the companies said on Wednesday, with Adecco combining AKKA with its own Modis tech brand.
Adecco said it was buying the engineering and technical consulting group, which is listed on Euronext Paris and in Brussels, to expand its professional staffing line which has higher margins and is less sensitive to the economic cycle than its general staffing business.
“We are very pleased to announce today that AKKA Technologies and Modis will come together in a landmark transaction,” Adecco Group CEO Alain Dehaze said in a statement.
The Swiss company, which competes with Randstad as the world’s largest provider of temporary staffing, said the combination with science and IT staffing business Modis would create be the second largest player in the sector, with 50,000 workers on their books.
The deal would be margin and earnings per share accretive from the first year, and would be economic value added positive from year three, Adecco said.
The acquisition, for a multiple of 10.6 times estimated 2022 earnings before interest, tax and depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA), is expected to be closed in the first half of 2022, subject to approvals.
AKKA reported revenues of 1.5 billion euros in 2020 and an operating loss of 170.5 million euros as it was hit hard by the COVID-19 crisis.
($1 = 0.8460 euros)
(Reporting by John Revill and Sudip Kar-Gupta; Editing by Christopher Cushing and Maria Sheahan)
