EG Acquisitions: What It Buys and What It Pays, 2015-2025

Francisco Partners bought EG from Axcel in 2019 for about EUR 500M, and most of EG’s buying has happened since: 39 of its 48 software acquisitions in our records from 2015 to 2025 came under its current owner. The company, based in Ballerup outside Copenhagen, is now one of the most active buyers of vertical software in the Nordic countries.

The acquisitions paid for scale. Revenue rose from EUR 193M in 2020 to EUR 380M in 2025, and the deals made since June 2019 cost EUR 602M before the debt EG repaid for the companies it bought. EG pays a market price, close to the median for private software, and most of it at closing; for an owner the bigger questions come later, because every acquisition moves into one operating model.

EG files consolidated annual reports with the Danish Business Authority, and they give each year’s spend and, for the larger deals, the price paid and the revenue bought. Those notes, combined with offer documents and seller releases, are the basis for the revenue multiples here.

EG Companies and Divisions: How EG Is Organized

EG sells industry software to businesses and public bodies in the Nordic countries: more than 47,000 customers and 3,000 employees, with 87.7 percent of 2025 revenue recurring. It is organized in three divisions, each a set of industry business units, and most of those units were built or extended through acquisitions.

Acquisitions run through the board’s Mergers and Acquisitions Committee, which met 12 times in 2024 and 8 times in 2025, and the group has had a Senior Vice President for Mergers & Acquisitions since 2020.

The group is profitable at the operating level and carries heavy debt: adjusted EBITDA reached EUR 145M in 2025, a 38.1 percent margin, while net financial expenses of EUR 117M left a loss for the year of EUR 93M. Debt funds much of the buying, so EG’s borrowing capacity sets how much it can spend in a year.

How Much EG Buys

Under Axcel, from 2015 to May 2019, EG made nine acquisitions, at most four in a year and zero in 2018. The pace changed with the new owner: three deals in the second half of 2019, eight in 2020 and a peak of 10 in 2021. The count then held at five to seven a year for three years and fell to one in 2025.

Spending followed a different curve, with its peak in 2024. EG paid EUR 110M in 2020 and EUR 113M in 2021, then a record EUR 152M in 2024. On top of the price, EG repaid EUR 132M of debt in the companies it bought from 2021 to 2025. In cash, net of the cash it acquired, EG spent EUR 576M on acquisitions from 2020 to 2025.

In 2025 EG’s room to borrow was small: at the end of the year it had EUR 7.6M of undrawn credit facilities, against EUR 76M a year earlier, and its letter to shareholders describes market dynamics that constrained M&A activity through the year. In February 2026 EG refinanced with committed facilities of EUR 1.4bn and resumed buying at once. Equity has funded the program too: of the EUR 400M investment round led by Sofina and LGT Capital Partners in November 2023, EUR 150M of new capital was earmarked for future acquisitions.

What Size of Company EG Buys

EG buys small companies. For the 29 acquisitions since June 2019 with a revenue figure in its notes, the median business had annual revenue of about EUR 4.0M; 10 of the 29 had revenue under EUR 3M, and four brought EUR 10M or more. Two of the 39 were asset deals, the purchase of a product and its customers from a company that kept the rest.

Deal size varies from year to year: the acquisitions of the second half of 2019 brought more than EUR 34M of revenue between them, while those of the whole of 2021 brought EUR 38M. In February 2026 EG agreed to buy two software businesses from Tieto with combined revenue of about EUR 37M, which EG calls the largest acquisition in its history.

EG also buys companies that are still loss-making: one of the listed companies it bought in 2024 had negative EBITDA in the year before the offer. What it looks for, in the words of its head of M&A in 2020, is companies “at the top of their industry” with “deep industry knowledge and understanding of their customers”.

What EG Buys

EG buys software that runs a business in one industry, and it buys the same industry repeatedly. The table classifies the 39 acquisitions since June 2019 by the industry of the software they make.

Construction and property lead with 13 deals, a third of the total. EG entered Finland’s construction software market in 2021 and has since bought four companies there, which together give it a position across cost estimation, project management and site compliance. Energy and utilities follow with seven deals in billing, customer information and energy management software, four of them in Sweden. Healthcare, public sector, education and legal software together took 12.

The same pattern recurs across industries: EG buys a local leader in one country, then a second in the next country, and adds modules around them. Its beauty and wellness unit grew from a Danish salon system, bought in 2016, into a Nordic one through acquisitions in Norway in 2020 and 2021 and in Finland in 2024.

EG has also narrowed what it buys. Under Axcel it also bought IT services firms working on Microsoft Dynamics; EG sold that services business to DXC in February 2019 and has bought software businesses since.

Where EG Buys

EG buys in the Nordic countries. Of its 48 acquisitions since 2015, 28 were in Denmark, 9 in Norway, 6 in Finland and 4 in Sweden; the one in Poland was the development arm of Holte, its Norwegian construction software business. Under Axcel the program was entirely Danish, all nine deals; since June 2019 Denmark accounts for 19 of 39. Several of the companies it bought sell further afield, with operations in the United States, Iceland, the United Kingdom, Poland, Estonia and Latvia, and every one of those came inside a Nordic company. For an owner outside the Nordic countries, EG’s record says its interest runs through a business with Nordic customers.

EG’s revenue has spread across the region: in 2019, 77 percent came from Denmark; by 2025 the share was 49.9 percent, with Norway at 27.6 percent, Sweden at 10.0 percent and Finland at 8.9 percent. Finland went from zero acquisitions before 2021 to six since. EG’s 2026 deals point the program toward Sweden: a Swedish legal software company, and two Tieto businesses serving schools in Sweden and Finland and Swedish government agencies.

EG’s cost base reaches further than its customers: it opened a software delivery center in Warsaw in 2019, and its delivery center in Mangalore, India, had 847 full-time employees at the end of 2025, up from an average of 260 in 2024. EG says its new hiring is shifting toward India.

What EG Pays: Acquisition Multiples

EG’s notes give the price of each year’s acquisitions and, for the larger ones, the target’s estimated annual revenue and the debt EG repaid at closing. We matched those notes with the offer documents for the two listed companies EG bought and with the release of the listed group that sold it a carve-out.

That gives nine acquisitions with an EV/Revenue multiple, at a median of 4.1x and a range of 3.2x to 9.0x. Across the private software deals in our valuation research, the median is 3.7x. The six private companies in the set priced at a median of 3.7x, level with the market; the two listed takeovers and the carve-out priced higher, between 4.1x and 6.5x.

Prices rose in the later deals: the four acquisitions of 2020 to 2022 in the set priced between 3.2x and 4.1x revenue, and of the five in 2023 and 2024, four priced above 5x. Smaller deals priced lower: for its acquisitions of 2019 to 2021, most of them small, EG reported both the total price and the annual revenue it bought, EUR 287M for about EUR 107M of revenue, or about 2.7x.

On the listed deals EG paid premiums of 41 percent and 104 percent over the last share price before the offer, after securing support from 45 percent and 53 percent of the shareholders. EG has also walked away: in 2024 it approached a healthcare software company listed in Oslo with a cash offer and pre-acceptances; the target’s board declined to recommend the price, and EG withdrew.

Few of EG’s targets publish EBITDA, too few for a median EBITDA multiple. As arithmetic, 4.1x revenue equals 13.5x EBITDA at a 30 percent margin and about 20x at a 20 percent margin, against 19.0x across private software deals. EG itself earns 38.1 percent, so at its own margin 4.1x revenue is 10.7x EBITDA. EG’s notes describe its targets by revenue and tie its earn-outs to revenue targets, so revenue is the measure it prices on: for a seller with margins close to EG’s, a revenue multiple at the market median is a low multiple of profit, and a buyer pricing on EBITDA may pay more.

Francisco Partners paid about EUR 500M for EG in 2019, and the 2023 minority round valued the group at more than EUR 1.3bn, according to the Danish business daily Børsen: more than 4x EG’s 2023 revenue, above what EG paid for most of the companies it bought.

How EG Structures a Deal

EG buys the whole company. Its notes describe each acquisition as 100 percent of the shares or a whole business activity, and EG pays for the business free of debt: it repaid EUR 132M of target debt at closing from 2021 to 2025, on top of the prices in its notes.

Most of the money arrives at closing, about 89 percent of the price from 2020 to 2025. Contingent payments made up 2.8 percent of the price over those years, tied in the notes to revenue targets over one to two years; in 2025 the maximum EG could pay under such terms was EUR 15M for that year and EUR 18M for 2026. Deferred payments vary more: in 2024 EG recorded EUR 43M, 28 percent of that year’s price, as debt to be paid after closing. Share consideration appears only in 2015 and 2017, under Axcel.

For an owner, the structure is simple to evaluate: the headline price is mostly cash and the debt is repaid, so the negotiation centers on the price, the working capital, the definition of debt and any deferred or contingent amount. A private equity platform can offer a different trade, part of the equity rolled into the platform and sold again at its exit, as our guide to Verkauf Ihres Unternehmens an ein Software-Roll-up describes.

What Happens After Closing

Integration runs deep. EG’s 2025 report says companies joining through acquisition are brought into its common operating model, with comparable policies, practices and standard customer contracts across the group. That model shares product management, development, sales, fulfillment and customer support across units, and EG says it preserves each industry’s expertise and product business model within it.

Nine of the 39 gave up their own legal identity on arrival: seven were merged into existing EG companies, among them EG Danmark A/S and EG Norge AS, and two asset deals folded straight into EG units. Others keep their company but take the EG name: Holte, the Norwegian construction software company bought in 2020, is now registered as EG Holte AS.

Founders and managers have stayed: when EG bought a Danish installation software company in 2019, both founders joined, one to lead all of EG’s construction business in Denmark, and the chief executive of its first Norwegian retail acquisition joined EG’s corporate management. Its 2025 report describes a mentorship program built into the onboarding of new acquisitions.

EG keeps what it buys: since June 2019 it has sold one business, the consultancy IT Minds, as part of leaving IT services. Over the same years its adjusted EBITDA margin rose from 30.4 to 38.1 percent.

For a founder, the trade runs both ways. Your product gains a Nordic sales footprint, a shared platform and a development center in India; your company may be merged into an EG entity, and your brand may take the EG name. Ask EG which of its acquired businesses still trade under their own names, and speak to founders who joined two or three years ago.

EG’s Competitive Position

In our view EG is the leading consolidator of vertical software in Denmark and one of a handful across the Nordic countries, and it is one of the ten serial consolidators in our ranking of software acquirers.

The competition for the same targets is strong. Visma, owned by Hg, buys business software across the region; Vitec Software, listed in Sweden, buys vertical software; the operating groups of Constellation Software buy vertical software businesses; and private equity platforms build their own groups.

For an owner, the rivals matter in two ways: they test EG’s price, and they offer a different life after closing. A buyer that keeps your brand, your entity and your management in place is a different deal from one that merges the business into its own, even at the same price.

Is This a Good Time to Sell to EG?

EG is buying again, and at a larger scale. After one acquisition in 2025, it refinanced in February 2026 with EUR 1.4bn of committed facilities, extended its debt to 2033 and cut its interest margin by 1.75 points. Within weeks it had bought a Swedish legal software company, agreed the largest acquisition in its history and agreed to buy a Norwegian software company serving fire services and electricity grids.

The group is in good shape for it. In 2025 recurring revenue grew 13.6 percent, 7.8 percent organically, and adjusted EBITDA grew 25.9 percent. EG writes that the market dynamics that held back deals through 2025 have fundamentally shifted and that AI is reshaping its addressable market.

The wider software market repriced in early 2026 as AI coding agents cast doubt on parts of the sector. In our March 2026 webinar on SaaS valuations we noted that the businesses holding up best were smaller, vertically focused and serving mission-critical workflows, the profile EG buys.

The case for selling to EG is strongest, we think, for a founder of a vertical software business with EUR 2.5M to 8M of revenue, mostly recurring, in one of EG’s industries and one of its four countries. EG pays a market price on revenue for that profile and pays most of it at closing. If your product is exposed to AI disruption, our webinar view stands: now is a good time to sell, while valuations for software businesses remain sensible. For an owner whose business is growing and who can carry the risk, keeping the company is a good option too. The latest prices are in our Software-Bewertungsmultiplikatoren Analyse.

Why You Need an M&A Advisor When EG Approaches You

EG has closed 48 acquisitions since 2015, runs them through a board committee that met 12 times in 2024, and employs a senior executive whose job is buying companies. The owner across the table is selling one business, once.

Establish what the business is worth before the first offer arrives, from comparable transactions and from how a buyer paying around 4x revenue will read your margin. A profitable business priced at a market revenue multiple can be sold below what its earnings justify. Then bring in one or two other buyers, at least one with a different model: a buyer that keeps your brand and management, or a private equity platform that lets you roll part of the equity, can be worth more to you than the headline price suggests, and the second bid tests the first.

Negotiate everything the cash price leaves open: the definitions of debt and working capital, the warranties and their limits, any deferred payment and when it falls due, the revenue targets behind any contingent amount, and the plans for your team, your brand and your development work after the merger into EG. A competing bid gives you room on all of it. The figures on this page describe a market; your company will be priced in a negotiation.

That is the work we do for owners of software businesses while they keep running the company, and running it well through the process matters, because how the business performs ends up in the price. For how an approach fits into a wider sale, see Software-Unternehmen verkaufen und strategische versus finanzielle Käufer.

Über Aventis Advisors

Aventis Advisors is an M&A advisor for software and technology companies. We believe the world would be better off with fewer but better quality M&A deals, done at the right moment for the company and its owners. Our goal is to provide honest, insight-driven advice that lays out all the options clearly, including the option to keep the status quo.

Kontakt aufnehmen um zu besprechen, wie viel Ihr Unternehmen wert sein könnte und wie der Prozess abläuft.