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Antares Vision, a global provider of intelligent Track & Trace, Inspection and Smart Data Management solutions for the Life Science and Food & Beverage sectors, announced entering into an agreement for the acquisition of rfXcel Corporation (“rfXcel”), a U.S.-based Software-as-a-Service (“SaaS”) company, serving the Life Science and Food & Beverage sectors, for an upfront consideration of $120 million on a debt free and cash free basis.
Key Highlights of the Acquisition
1) rfXcel’s AI-enabled SaaS platform more than doubles Antares Vision Group’s software business and adds high share of contracted, recurring and scalable revenues
2) Combining rfXcel’s software platform with Antares Vision Group’s Track & Trace complete solution will enhance value for Life Science and Food & Beverage customers in North America, Europe and Asia
3) Antares Vision Group will leverage rfXcel’s software to continue to drive global growth and expand into new market segments requiring end-to-end supply chain digitalization solutions
4) The acquisition is expected to be accretive to Antares Vision Group’s (1) revenue growth, (2) EPS and (3) Free Cash Flow from year-1 (before synergies)
Successful standalone business
Founded in 2003 by Glenn Abood and Jack Tarkoff, and backed by Kayne Partners Fund, the growth private equity group of Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors, L.P. since August 2017, rfXcel is a pure play software provider to the global Life Science sector, offering SaaS-based Track & Trace solutions that improve safety, enable regulatory compliance and deliver real-time business insights. The company provides supply chain digitalization and transparency through a comprehensive, data-driven offering that includes traceability, serialization and integrated supply chain monitoring.
rfXcel operates a 100% SaaS business model with a significant portion of its revenues deriving from long-term subscription-based contracts, largely recurring and with strong visibility (average contract length >4 years, >80% recurring in nature).
Headquartered in Reno, Nevada (USA), offices in San Francisco and subsidiaries in UK and Russia, rfXcel has 63 full time employees and is led by an experienced management team of veterans each averaging over 25 years of experience in the industry. With global presence in 40 countries, a diversified customer base of more than 190 clients and thousands of partners across the Life Science, the Food & Beverage and the Public sectors, rfXcel is one of the leading Track & Trace software players in the market. The company has created over 5 billion serial numbers and has the capacity to process over one million items a day, enabling complete supply chain transparency and rapid digitalization.
Strategic and operational rationale
The acquisition of rfXcel will strengthen further Antares Vision Group’s software capabilities. The Antares Vision Group will leverage rfXcel capabilities and software suite to help customers accelerating the transition towards digital and sustainable supply chains, enabling full transparency and visibility. The acquisition will also enable significant opportunities to cross-sell (i) rfXcel solutions across Antares Vision Group’s large and growing installed base of Track & Trace and Inspection solutions and across a broad, blue-chip customer base of over 2,500 clients, as well as (ii) Antares Vision Group’s products to rfXcel’s existing customer base.
Together with rfXcel, the Antares Vision Group makes an important headway to provide full stack end-to-end digital solution enabling traceability, serialization processing, regulatory compliance and gathering and monitoring of real-time data to optimize and streamline customers’ supply chains while providing complete end-to-end visibility: from the product ingredients and raw materials to the end customer experience. The acquisition meaningfully increases Antares Vision Group’s share of contracted, recurring, high growth and high margin software revenue, more than doubling to c.21% of total Group revenues (compared to 9% LTM as of June-2020 prior to the transaction).
Emidio Zorzella, Chairman and CEO of Antares Vision said:
“Massimo and I are delighted that we have reached agreement to acquire rfXcel. The acquisition has a compelling strategic rationale with strong operational and financial benefits. The combination will strengthen Antares Vision Group's position as one of the global leaders in the Track & Trace segment, accelerating our growth and representing an attractive value creation opportunity for our customers, our shareholder the whole Antares Vision Group.
Demand for traceability and serialised products and services has increased significantly over the last few years, and this transaction accelerates our ability to offer best-in-class propositions in all our key reference sectors, Life Science and Food & Beverage. We look forward to welcoming the management and employees of rfXcel to the Antares Vision Group and working together to serve our customers across the world.
The acquisition of rfXcel will be perfectly in line with our strategic vision and it will accelerate our role in the digitisation of the industrial world. The acquisition will enable the Antares Vision Group to broaden and deepen its relationships with existing and new customers thanks to a more comprehensive and complementary product portfolio to market.”
Glenn Abood, President and Founder of rfXcel said:
“This transaction represents the next chapter in rfXcel’s evolving story—the combined company will offer the most comprehensive Track and Trace solution in every market around the globe. When Jack Tarkoff and I started rfXcel over 17 years ago, our vision was to make it possible to Track & Trace finished goods, raw materials and ingredients as they move in the supply chain. Antares Vision shares the same goals and, by virtue of their size and global footprint, we will be able to accelerate our plans. The rfXcel management team is delighted to join with Antares Vision to offer customers in the Life Science, Food & Beverage and other industries the most complete end-to-end solution for Track & Trace on the market today.”
