Acquisition of Liones Holding B.V.

RNS Number : 6740F

RWS Holdings PLC

23 March 2022

 

For immediate release   23 March 2022

 RWS Holdings plc

Acquisition of Liones Holding B.V.

RWS Holdings plc ("RWS"), a unique world-leading provider of technology-enabled language, content and intellectual property services, announces that it has acquired Liones Holding B.V. ("Liones") for €17.5 million (on a cash-and-debt free basis) with additional payments of €2.5 million due on each of the first and second anniversaries of completion.

The flagship product of Liones is Fonto, the leading cloud native, data driven authoring solution for mission critical documents. The Fonto suite of products allows non-technical subject matter experts to create, edit and collaborate on structured documents by hiding the complexity of the underlying mark-up languages.

Liones, based in The Hague, Netherlands, will continue to be managed by its founders, Jan Benedictus and Taeke Kuyvenhoven, and will seek to build on its historic record of strong revenue growth.  In the year ended 31 December 2021, Liones recorded an operating profit of €2.0 million (2020: €1.2 million) on revenue of €4.9 million (2020: €3.5 million) from clients in a range of sectors including Life Sciences, Pharmaceuticals and Financial Services.

The acquisition will be funded from RWS's existing cash resources.

Ian El-Mokadem, Chief Executive Officer of RWS, commented:

"The acquisition of Liones enhances RWS's leadership position in the structured content market.  We already admire the merits of its Fonto product as it forms an important element within our existing Tridion Docs product, and believe that Fonto will enhance RWS's capability to enable our customers to make the optimal use of their content. Today's news also demonstrates our determination that RWS will remain a leader in the structured content market."

RWS Holdings plc Andrew Brode, Chairman Ian El-Mokadem, Chief Executive Officer Des Glass, Chief Financial Officer

01753 480200

MHP (Financial PR advisor) Katie Hunt / Simon Hockridge

[e-mail]                                                                        020 3128 8100

Numis (Nomad & Joint Broker) Stuart Skinner / Kevin Cruickshank/Will Baunton Berenberg (Joint Broker) Ben Wright/Toby Flaux/ Alix Mecklenburg-Solodkoff	020 7260 1000 020 3207 7800

About RWS

RWS Holdings plc is a unique, world-leading provider of technology-enabled language, content and intellectual property services. Through content transformation and multilingual data analysis, our unique combination of technology and cultural expertise helps our clients to grow by ensuring they are understood anywhere, in any language.

Our purpose is unlocking global understanding. By combining cultural understanding, client understanding and technical understanding, our services and technology assist our clients to acquire and retain customers, deliver engaging user experiences, maintain compliance and gain actionable insights into their data and content.

Our clients include 90 of the world's top 100 brands, the top 10 pharmaceutical companies and the top 20 patent filers. Our client base spans Europe, Asia Pacific and North and South America. We work in the automotive, chemical, financial, legal, medical, pharmaceutical, technology and telecommunications sectors, which we serve from 80+ global locations across five continents.

Founded in 1958, RWS is headquartered in the UK and publicly listed on AIM, the London Stock Exchange regulated market (RWS.L).

For further information, please visit: www.rws.com .

 

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