Bryan, Garnier & Co. has successfully led the secondary placement of Trace One shares
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Paris, May 7th 2009 – Bryan, Garnier & Co, the independent pan-European investment bank focused on growth companies, today announced the secondary placement of Trace One shares which were held by historical financial shareholders of the company and included investment funds Siparex Ventures, SGAM AI, A Plus Finance, CDC Entreprises, Equitis and I-Source Gestion.
The operation allowed Trace One to attract 3 new capital development investors, namely, Oddo Asset Management, Tempo Capital and OTC Asset Management. Bryan, Garnier & Co acted as sole financial advisor to Trace One’s management and shareholders.
Trace One is a leading international software company specialising in collaborative on-demand Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions in SaaS mode (Software as a Service) for the retail and consumer goods industries. Trace One’s Product Management Suite (PMS) enables retailers and brand owners to industrially manage the development of private label products collaboratively with their extended enterprise to gain efficiency.
Based on state-of-the-art collaborative document and project management features, PMS comprises a portfolio of on-demand Web-based solutions allowing immediate roll-out, covering products development, quality and packaging management. Trace One customers include retail industry leaders such as Carrefour, Auchan and more than 1,000 companies in the international consumer goods market.
The new investors will support Trace One’s growth into new regions, and help the company continue to innovate and develop cutting-edge collaborative PLM solutions in SaaS mode for manufacturers and retailers of Consumer Packaged Goods.
Bruno Tourme, Managing Director at Bryan, Garnier & Co in Head of Technology and lead on the transaction commented: “We see Trace One as one of the most promising European SaaS providers of collaborative PLM retail solutions. The company has a pioneering vision of the sector and has also proven its ability to execute a significant and sustainable growth.
This successful transaction demonstrates the ability of our experienced investment bankers to provide industry-specific advice and deliver solutions to our clients despite a challenging financial environment. It confirms our position as a leading European investment bank in Software and a leader worldwide in retail technologies.”
Henri-Pierre Jeancard, Director at Bryan, Garnier & Co in charge of private equity and capital markets financing, added: “The context in which this transaction took place, paired with Trace One’s strong growth profile, required much flexibility and creativity in the structuring. We are very proud to have delivered it to the satisfaction of all parties.”
Following the sale of AS Groupe to Lefebvre Software, of Civitas to Cegid, the equity funding for Jobpartners, the sale of Infolog Solutions to Generix and of Orsyp to Argos Soditic, this transaction confirms Bryan, Garnier & Co’ status as a leading investment bank in the area of Technology, and particularly in Application Software. Trace One was one of the first applications providers in Europe to implement a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business model. This model, which provides vendors with strong visibility and a steady flow of recurring revenues, is expected to gain widespread adoption over the coming years. Bryan, Garnier & Co is therefore very proud to be part of the emergence and strong development of such a dynamic and innovating company as Trace One.
Jérôme Malavoy, Chief Executive Officer of Trace One, added: “We worked for several months with Bryan Garnier within a highly unstable capital market. We evaluated various alternatives throughout the process ensuring that we select the most appropriate financing for the company. Bryan Garnier’s unique commitment at each stage of the process and its large scope of financing and secondary solutions has enabled us to seize the most adequate structure with the best possible partners. Bryan, Garnier & Co’s strong understanding of retail software business was primordial. It enabled us to carry out this transaction in an extremely complicated financial environment. Overall, Bryan, Garnier & Co’s intervention combined a strong coordination of the transactional process with senior involvement and broad investors’ network.”
Professionals involved in this transaction:
Bruno Tourme Managing Director – Head of Technology Group
+44 207 332 2551 | btourme@bryangarnier.com
Henri-Pierre Jeancard Director – Head of Capital Markets Financing
+33 1 56 68 75 97 | hpjeancard@bryangarnier.com
Guillaume Cauchoix Senior Analyst – Corporate Finance
+33 1 56 68 75 87 | gcauchoix@bryangarnier.com
About Trace One
Trace One is a software editor providing collaborative solutions in SaaS (Software as a Service) mode for companies in industry and trade. Its mission is to facilitate exchanges and optimize collaboration between manufacturers and retailers, and more generally any company involved in the design, manufacture, inspection, labeling and marketing of products for general consumption.
The process virtualization solutions today offer companies valuable aid in their search for improved efficiency and productivity. These solutions enable the costs of processing administrative and technical data to be reduced considerably, the collaborative processes made more fluent, a large number of projects to be managed in parallel and the time-to-launch of new products to be reduced.
The choice of the SaaS mode (application in hosted mode) complements the benefits of process virtualization with rapidity of deployment, pooled infrastructure costs (human and material), enhanced security, transparent administration, automatic upgrades and considerable time savings in general. Trace One markets its solutions under two distinct brands: Trace One for its private label product management solutions and Catalogic for its product data sheet management and retail network organization solutions.