I-Tracing lbo with Eurazeo

France’s leading independent provider of cybersecurity services has entered into negotiations with Eurazeo

LBO 2021, May

Consulting & IT services

“We are very pleased to enter I-TRACING Group’s new phase of development alongside Eurazeo and Sagard, and to write a new chapter in our development as an independent company, 15 years after it was founded. Since 2017, we have made excellent headway with the help of Keensight Capital’s teams: we have tripled our revenue in the space of four years, structured our offering and our organization, doubled our workforce, accelerated our international growth and completed our first acquisition. We are very grateful for their valuable support. With the support of Eurazeo and Sagard, we will now step up our growth both in France and internationally in Europe, Asia and North America, accompanying our major French and European clients with all of their cybersecurity needs. All of this will be done while maintaining our values, our mindset, the quality and expertise of our services, our commitment to our clients and the fulfilment of our staff.”

Théodore-Michel Vrangos and Laurent Charvériat, I-TRACING’s Founding Partners

Eurazeo announces that its small-mid buyout team has signed an exclusive dealing arrangement to invest in I-TRACING alongside the company’s managers and founders, Théodore-Michel Vrangos and Laurent Charvériat who, together, would hold 49% of the company’s equity capital after completion of this operation.

Keensight Capital, a minority financial shareholder since 2017, would sell its entire stake while Sagard NewGen would invest as a minority shareholder in a holding company controlled by Eurazeo. The transaction would value I-TRACING at €165 million.

Eurazeo would become the group’s reference shareholder with an investment of around €65 million. Founded in 2005, I-TRACING offers a comprehensive range of high value-added services to fully secure its clients’ IT systems: consulting, auditing and pen tests, integration of diverse software solutions and their associated managed services, ID and access management, operation of SOCs (Security Operations Centers) and deployment of cyberattack response units (CERTs – Computer Emergency Response Teams).

Headquartered in Paris, I-TRACING employs more than 285 experts who support their clients (CAC40, SBF120 and medium-sized companies) with all of their cybersecurity needs. The company also has subsidiaries in Montreal, Hong-Kong and London, allowing it to offer managed services and support on a 24/7 basis. In 2020, the Group generated revenues of almost €50 million, an increase of approximately 40% versus 2019, despite the health crisis.

Its 2021 revenue target is around €70 million. Eurazeo's small-mid buyout team, Sagard NewGen, and I-TRACING's senior management team share the ambition of building a leading European provider of cybersecurity services. This will involve bolstering the company’s growth through further expansion, capitalizing on its high level of expertise and on the buoyancy of its market and the underlying demand, engaging an active buy-and-build strategy with several targets already identified, and developing the Group for the benefit of its clients by supporting them internationally.