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

Visma has bought more accounting, payroll and HR software companies than any other buyer in our records: 245 software acquisitions from 2015 to 2025, which also makes it one of the busiest software acquirers anywhere. Founded in Oslo in 1996 and owned by Hg since 2006, it runs more than 170 business units serving 2.4 million customers, and since 2022 it has committed between €0.8bn and €1.1bn a year to acquisitions.

The typical target is small and growing fast. Visma’s filings put the average cost of its smaller acquisitions of 2023 to 2025 at €21M, for companies with average revenue of €3.4M in the year they were bought. It is the benchmark buyer for software that small businesses and their accountants run on, and it pays well for growth, with a large part of the price tied to what happens after closing. For a seller the earn-out is where much of the value sits.

Behind the counts are those 245 deals, announced from 2015 to 2025 and since completed, which we assembled from Mergermarket and Visma’s own releases and filings. Spend and aggregate prices come from its annual reports, its releases and interviews with its M&A team.

Visma Companies and Brands: How Visma Is Organized

Visma owns its businesses through 159 subsidiaries and reports two segments. Business sells accounting, payroll and business software to small and medium-sized companies and to accounting offices in 28 markets across Europe and Latin America, with revenue of €2,203M in 2025. Public sells software to governments and public institutions, with €595M. Inside the segments sit more than 170 business units, most of them local brands that kept their names after joining. Visma lists these among its leading brands:

Acquisitions run through one central team. Sindre Talleraas Holen, Visma’s Director of M&A, leads about 20 full-time M&A staff based across the Nordics, Benelux, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Central and Eastern Europe and the UK, and he signs every letter of intent. Each deal also needs an operational champion inside Visma before the letter of intent goes out, so the Visma companies already active in your market are worth knowing before the first conversation.

How Much Visma Buys

Visma made 245 software acquisitions from 2015 to 2025. The pace stepped up in 2020: 63 deals in the five years to 2019, then 182 from 2020 to 2025, with a peak of 37 in 2021.

Spending has run between €0.8bn and €1.1bn a year since 2022. Visma committed €1.1bn to acquisitions in 2022, then €955M, €784M and €967M to the business combinations of 2023, 2024 and 2025: €2.7bn in three years. Those totals include the fair value of contingent payments, and the cash follows over time: Visma paid €296M in 2024 and €266M in 2025 to sellers of businesses bought in earlier years, and €313M in the first half of 2026 alone.

Visma funds this from its own cash flow and debt. Free cash flow was €1,002M in 2025, and Holen has said its growth has historically been self-financed, through profit from existing operations and debt.

What Size of Company Visma Buys

Visma’s filings show size in aggregate: the group treats acquisitions with an enterprise value above €100M as significant and reports the rest together. The acquisitions below that line in 2023 to 2025 cost €1.6bn in total, earn-outs included, on €336M of revenue in the year they were bought, and their €21M average hides a wide range: Holen told Mergermarket in 2023 that strategic fit counts for more than current size, and that the companies Visma bought in 2021 ranged in value from €19M to more than €190M.

Fourteen of the acquisitions carry a reported enterprise value, at a median of $75M, and five of them were above $100M. Disclosure follows the larger deals, so the typical acquisition sits well below that median. The deals Visma reported as significant in 2023 to 2025 were accounting, tax, expense management, healthcare, public sector and ERP businesses in Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Italy and Brazil.

The filings also show what kind of company Visma buys. The smaller acquisitions of 2025 together made a loss after tax of €14M in the year they were bought, and Visma’s annual report says its own margin was held back by acquiring earlier-stage companies with high growth and initially lower margins. A business that reinvests its profit in growth is squarely in Visma’s range.

What Visma Buys

Beyond its 245 software acquisitions, our records show 47 more from 2015 to 2025: 33 IT services firms, mostly IT, data, cloud and e-commerce consultancies, a line Visma has since left by selling its IT consulting business to CVC in 2022, and 14 other businesses, including purchasing, payment and outsourcing services.

The software rows show every vertical with at least five deals, 225 of the 245; the last row holds the 47 IT services and other deals. The rest spread across supply chain, financial services, industrial software and smaller niches. Accounting and payroll are the core: together they account for 142 acquisitions, 58 percent of the total.

Visma’s criteria are short: its page for owners asks for mission-critical software that businesses depend on to operate, cloud-native and AI-native products, and entrepreneurial leadership. Its 2025 annual report adds strong financial profiles, market-leading top-line growth and room for margins to expand, and its 2024 results describe the route into a new country: acquiring the best up-and-coming SaaS startups locally, while Holen rules out turnarounds.

Where Visma Buys

Visma’s software acquisitions from 2015 to 2025 were in 24 countries, all of them in Europe and Latin America. By country, the Netherlands leads with 55, followed by Norway with 42, Sweden with 31, Denmark with 30, Finland with 28, Belgium with 14, France with 8, and Argentina, Chile and Spain with 5 each. By region, 133 of the 245 were in the Nordics, 69 in Benelux, 24 in the rest of Western Europe, 12 in Latin America and 7 in Central and Eastern Europe.

The map has widened step by step: Latin America from 2020, starting in Argentina, then Spain from 2021, France and Germany from 2022, by Holen’s account, Italy and Croatia from 2024 and Brazil from 2025, where Visma made its largest acquisition of that year. The newer regions now grow fastest: in 2025 the Business segment’s recurring revenue rose 22 percent organically in Continental Europe and 20 percent in the rest of the world, against 10 percent in the Nordics.

What Visma Pays: Acquisition Multiples

Visma prices growth and margin together. Holen describes a rule of 40, revenue growth plus cash EBITDA margin, that should ideally exceed 40, and says the companies Visma bought in 2024 averaged close to 50. He has said Visma values each deal against a library of its own past acquisitions, that prices vary by country, and that Visma bids at market prices. Asked about a business with about 10 million of annual recurring revenue growing 40 percent or more, he put the price close to 10 times that revenue.

Disclosed prices are scarce, so we gathered every one we could match to the target’s revenue: deals with a reported multiple, Visma’s own filings for its significant acquisitions, and prices and financials published by listed targets and company registries. That gives 14 acquisitions with an EV/Revenue multiple, at a median of 4.7x. Across the private software deals in our valuation research the median is 3.7x.

Twelve of the 14 were private companies, at the same median of 4.7x, and the two takeovers of listed companies came to 3.9x and 5.8x. Prices have risen: the seven deals from 2023 to 2025 had a median of 5.3x, against 4.4x for the seven from 2015 to 2022. Visma’s filings give a wider view: across all its business combinations of 2023 to 2025, total acquisition cost came to 6.4 times the acquired companies’ revenue in the year they were bought, and since that revenue includes the months after closing, a multiple of trailing revenue would sit higher still for a growing company.

EBITDA multiples are rare here, because many of the companies Visma buys spend their profit on growth, and too few deals carry a usable EBITDA for a median. As arithmetic, 4.7x revenue equals 15.7x EBITDA at a 30 percent margin and 13.4x at Visma’s own adjusted margin of 35 percent, against 19.0x across private software deals. A buyer that pays for growth pays a high multiple of revenue and a lower multiple of current profit, which is where a company that reinvests its profit gains against one that banks it.

A large part of that price is contingent. Contingent consideration made up 30 percent of Visma’s total acquisition cost across 2023 to 2025, at fair value, and Holen has said some founders earned far more on the earn-out than on the initial enterprise value. The headline multiple is therefore a range, and the targets behind the earn-out decide where in that range you land. Visma publishes its prices only in aggregate, so the buyer sees a library of its own deals while the seller sees a handful of public numbers.

How Visma Structures a Deal

The process runs through Visma’s own people: the M&A team runs financial due diligence in-house, with three in-house M&A lawyers and dedicated technology staff. Holen puts Visma’s close rate after a signed letter of intent above 90 percent and names technology and cybersecurity concerns as the single biggest reason Visma pulls out of deals, and Visma has called a target that could damage its brand or the group a red flag in due diligence. Prepare your code, security and data protection documentation before the first meeting. Visma can also be patient: it first met Acos, the Norwegian public sector software company it bought in 2023, in 2011.

The price comes in parts: Visma’s filings describe contingent payments as typically paid over one to five years after closing, calculated by a formula on future revenue, ARR or EBITDA, with a minimum and a maximum for each deal, and Holen describes earn-outs of one, three or five years, measured on EBITDA or ARR.

Visma buys control and commits to the rest. In its latest half-year report it describes acquiring between 50.01 and 100 percent of the voting shares, and any remaining shares are committed to be acquired through deferred mechanisms. Of the deals that state a stake, 78 were for 100 percent and 7 for a majority, and its filings show two of its larger deals of 2023 and 2024 starting at 72 percent and 65 percent. In Chile in 2025, Visma bought 55 percent of ComunidadFeliz at closing, with the rest due in three tranches of 15 percent over three years, tied to earn-outs.

Visma pays in cash, and its two completed offers for listed companies were cash offers. Equity appears too: when an Hg fund sold e-conomic to Visma in 2015, it took most of its payment as a stake in Visma, and Holen says founders can reinvest, owning, in his words, “a small stake of something big.”

For an owner, a structure like this turns part of the sale into a performance contract, and the terms of that contract carry as much weight as the headline price. 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 sprzedaży firmy do software roll-upu describes.

What Happens After Closing

Visma calls the first months onboarding. Its page for owners says it keeps acquired companies as they are, and it tells founders that they keep leading while Visma provides the rest. Acquired businesses keep their management, processes and CRM systems, Sifted reported in 2026, and Holen describes each deal as living its own life.

What changes is the reporting: Holen says acquired companies send a full monthly P&L, balance sheet and cash flow by the fifth working day of each month. Visma puts founders from its portfolio on acquired companies’ boards and tracks employee engagement every month through Peakon surveys.

Founders stay at a high rate: Holen puts the share still in place five years after closing at 70 to 80 percent. Visma invites prospective sellers to call anyone it has acquired in the last 15 years, and a founder who joins becomes part of a network of close to 200 software entrepreneurs. Ask Visma for those references, and ask them how their earn-outs were measured.

Brands can merge as Visma builds larger platforms: from September 2026, Yuki, WeFact and Visionplanner continue under the Nmbrs name in the Netherlands. Visma also sells what falls outside its focus. It sold its retail software business, including a company bought in 2015, to Symphony Technology Group in 2018, its IT consulting business to CVC in 2022 and Admincontrol, bought in 2017, to Euronext in 2025, and it spun off Norvato, a group of businesses serving larger organizations, at the end of 2025. Holen describes the aim as being the SMB ERP cloud champion in Europe and Latin America, and the businesses that fit that aim are the ones Visma keeps.

Visma’s Competitive Position

In our view Visma has become the default buyer for local accounting and payroll software in its markets, large enough that regulators watch it. From 2015 to 2025 it made 142 acquisitions of accounting, ERP and HR software companies in its 24 countries, against 23 by Constellation Software, 19 by The Access Group and 6 by TeamSystem in the same countries, and it ranks second to Constellation Software in our ranking of software acquirers.

Since April 2020, Norway’s competition authority has ordered Visma to report its acquisitions of businesses selling accounting systems in Norway, because Visma is the largest provider there. The latest order runs to the end of 2027, covers minority stakes and requires a report within three working days of signing. For a Norwegian accounting software owner, that adds a regulatory step to a sale to Visma and makes the other buyers more valuable to the process.

Cegid, TeamSystem, The Access Group, Exact and private equity platforms buy in Visma’s categories. A competing bid tests Visma’s price, and the choice of owner also shapes the earn-out, since Visma ties a large part of its price to the years after closing.

Is This a Good Time to Sell to Visma?

Visma is buying, at a slower pace so far in 2026. Its 2025 annual report expects M&A to remain a growth driver, with a strong forward pipeline, and its business combinations in the first half of 2026 cost €69M in total, with €79M more committed to acquisitions after June. A London listing is on hold: Visma considered one for 2026, and Bloomberg reported in March 2026 that it had been pushed to 2027 after the sell-off in software shares.

The wider software market repriced in early 2026, as AI coding agents cast doubt on parts of a sector that we saw as already carrying excessive valuations. 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, and that more buyers now ask how a business is addressing AI disruption risk. Visma looks for cloud-native and AI-native software, screens targets for a culture open to AI, and reports 250 product-related AI initiatives live across the group.

The case for selling is strongest, we think, for a founder with most of their wealth in one software business. If your product is mission-critical for small businesses or accountants, most of its revenue recurs and you are growing fast, Visma pays for that profile now, and the earn-out rewards growth you deliver after 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. Prepare the answer on AI before the first conversation. 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 mnożniki wyceny software badań.

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

The buyer has made 245 software acquisitions since 2015 and writes the earn-out formula; the owner across the table is selling one business.

Visma makes the route in easy: its page for owners names its Director of M&A with a direct email, and it approaches founders itself, as it did with Holded in 2021, in the same week as two other suitors. The strongest way to use that route is as part of a process. When ComunidadFeliz sold to Visma, its sale ran for about eight months and drew four or five formal offers and around 15 informal ones, and Visma joined late, introduced by the company’s advisor.

Establish what the business is worth before the first offer arrives, from comparable transactions and from how a buyer pricing on the rule of 40 will read your growth and your margin. Then bring in one or two other buyers, at least one with a different model: a strategic buyer or a private equity platform in your market can pay more at closing or pay for synergies, and the second bid tests the first.

Negotiate the earn-out as hard as the price: the metric, the minimum and maximum, the budget behind it, the period and your control over the business while it runs. 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, and with an earn-out it keeps counting after closing. For how an approach fits into a wider sale, see jak sprzedać firmę programistyczną i nabywców strategicznych a finansowych.

O 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.

Skontaktuj się z nami aby porozmawiać o tym, ile może być warta Twoja firma i jak przebiega ten proces.