Sesa, the Italian IT group listed on Euronext Milan, completed 58 acquisitions of IT services companies announced from 2015 to 2025 in our records, plus software houses. Sesa says openly what it pays. Its releases price deals at about five times EBITDA, well below the IT services market, and the median IT services company it bought had €6.0M of revenue when it joined. It buys a majority and keeps the founder in charge with a minority stake whose price is set years later. That second sale needs as much care as the first.
Based in Empoli, near Florence, Sesa grew revenue from €1.06bn in its 2015 fiscal year to €3.57bn in the year to April 2026, with acquisitions carrying a large part of that growth. It suits a founder who wants to keep running the business inside a larger group.
Sesa’s investor presentations, its published list of acquisitions and its deal releases give acquired revenue, target size and pricing. We count the deals from Mergermarket and that list, including those made through Var Group, Computer Gross and Base Digitale.
Sesa Subsidiaries: Var Group, Computer Gross and Base Digitale
Sesa runs four operating sectors, each led by one company, plus a corporate unit. Each sector buys for its own business, and the release for a deal names the subsidiary that signs it.
| Sector | Lead company | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Software and System Integration | Var Group | Digital integration: ERP, cloud, data, cybersecurity and industry software for companies |
| Business Services | Base Digitale Group | Platforms and back-office services for banks, insurers and large companies |
| ICT Value Added Solutions | Computer Gross | Value-added distribution of IT products and solutions in Italy |
| Digital Green Value Added Solutions | PMGREEN | Renewable energy, energy efficiency and electric mobility systems |
Computer Gross holds about 45 percent of the Italian value-added distribution market, by Sesa’s account. Base Digitale expected about €180M of revenue and employed about 1,000 people in fiscal 2026, and Sesa has owned all of it since January 2026. PMGREEN combines two energy-systems businesses Sesa agreed to buy in 2020 and 2024, with about €400M of turnover.
In fiscal 2026 the group reported €3.57bn of revenue, €260.4M of EBITDA and 6,770 people, with net debt of €17.5M. Control sits with the founders and management: Sesa Holding, the former ITH, holds about 55 percent of the shares, and Tamburi Investment Partners owned 23.8 percent of that holding company in February 2026. Sesa describes itself as run entirely under industrial management, and Alessandro Fabbroni is its chief executive. Its fiscal year ends on 30 April, so fiscal 2025 ran from May 2024 to April 2025.
How Many Companies Sesa Acquires
Counted by the calendar year of announcement, the pace picked up in 2019 with eight deals, peaked at 12 in 2022 and slowed to four in 2025. Var Group’s software and system integration sector made 44 of the 58, about three in four, including deals signed by its own subsidiaries.
Sesa measures its buying by the revenue and people it brings in. The companies it bought from fiscal 2015 to 2025 had about €830M of revenue and about 3,120 people when they joined. Over the same years Sesa’s headcount rose from 1,150 to 6,532, so acquisitions brought in more than half of the people it added, by our arithmetic, and Sesa says M&A contributed on average about a third of its growth a year over the last five years.
The money involved is modest for a group of this size, because the companies are small and the price is low. Sesa invested about €90M in acquisitions in the twelve months to January 2026, and its plan for fiscal 2027 and 2028 sets aside about €60M a year for M&A out of €110M of annual investment. Its balance sheet carries little debt: net debt at April 2026 was €17.5M, against €260.4M of EBITDA for the year.
What Size of Company Sesa Buys
Sesa publishes the revenue of each company it bought at the time of the deal, which makes size easy to read. That figure is on record for 50 of the 58 acquisitions, and the median company had €6.0M of revenue, with an interquartile range of €4.0M to €10.8M. Thirty-four of the 50 had revenue below €10M, and five had €20M or more.
Size follows the sector. The median company bought for Var Group’s software and integration sector had €5.2M of revenue, while the eight businesses bought for Sesa’s value-added distribution sector had a median of €19.0M. A specialist with a few million of revenue and a few dozen people is squarely in Var Group’s range.
20 Systems Integrators, 12 Resellers: Sesa’s IT Services Acquisitions
| Sesa sector | IT services acquisitions, 2015 to 2025 | Median revenue at acquisition |
|---|---|---|
| Software and System Integration | 44 | €5.2M |
| ICT Value Added Solutions | 8 | €19.0M |
| Business Services and Digital Green Value Added Solutions | 6 | €8.0M |
| Also bought: software companies (19) and other businesses (6), all sectors | 25 | €4.0M (software) |
The IT services deals spread across systems integration with 20, resellers and value-added distributors with 12, managed services with 7, cybersecurity with 5, data and analytics with 4, software development with 3, IT consulting with 2, digital engineering with 1 and four in other service lines.
The headline count covers IT services firms, as our ranking does. Beyond its 58 IT services acquisitions, our records show 25 more: 19 software companies and six other businesses. The software deals split 10 for Var Group and nine for Base Digitale, with a median revenue of €4.0M; five of Base Digitale’s are software for banks, insurers and financial compliance, and four of Var Group’s are ERP systems for small and midsize companies. The six other businesses range from energy systems distribution and an energy efficiency consultancy to physical security, a digital agency and a credit servicer. Every other figure on this page covers the 58 IT services deals.
Business software partners recur in the target descriptions: ERP specialists, SAP and Microsoft partners, and the ERP Panthera product line Var Group bought from Infracom in 2018. Six of the resellers are CAD and simulation software specialists for manufacturers, bought by Var Group in Italy and Germany, and Var Group built a cybersecurity division around Yarix, extended with buys in Germany, Spain and Italy. Base Digitale buys software and services for banks and insurers, including a capital markets software unit carved out of Nexi.
Sesa’s criteria come back in its releases and plans: long-term commitment from the people who run the target, high added value, and, under its plan for fiscal 2027 and 2028, a strong geographic and technological fit with the group.
Where Sesa Buys
Sesa bought IT services firms in six countries. Italy accounts for 46 of the 58 acquisitions, Germany for 7, Spain for 2, and China, the Netherlands and Switzerland for 1 each. Every deal outside Italy dates from 2019 onward, starting in Germany, and the share abroad has grown since: three of the four acquisitions in 2025 were outside Italy, in the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland.
In Italy, Sesa and TeamSystem were the two most active buyers of IT services firms from 2015 to 2025, ahead of Lutech. Abroad, it now reports sites in 12 countries, from Germany and Spain to Romania, Mexico and China.
The next push is the Iberian Peninsula. In 2026 Var Group took a first stake in a machine learning developer in Spain, with options to buy the rest, and bought a digital services firm in Andorra. It says it aims to reach more than €60M of revenue and 500 professionals there within two years through further acquisitions.
What Sesa Pays: Acquisition Multiples
Sesa publishes its pricing rule. Its releases price acquisitions on a reference multiple of enterprise value to normalized average EBITDA, adjusted for net cash or debt: 4.5x in 2020, 5x from 2021, 4.75x to 5x in 2024, and about 5x plus or minus net financial position in its investor material in 2026. Where a release omits the number, it says the price follows the criteria the group usually applies.
Few of Sesa’s acquisitions carry a price in our deal records, so we gathered every IT services deal where a Sesa release states the multiple or a published price allows one to be calculated. Ten qualify, all private companies. Their median is 5.0x EBITDA, and eight of the ten sit between 4.5x and 5.0x, in line with the stated rule.
Against the market, that is a low multiple. The median across 520 IT services deals in our valuation research is 10.4x EBITDA, and even the smallest deals, below $5M in value, have a median of 6.7x. Sesa pays roughly half the IT services median for the same profit.
On revenue the picture depends on margin, because Sesa prices on EBITDA. Across 11 IT services deals where we hold the target’s revenue and EBITDA, using the published price or the stated multiple, or 5x where a release cites the usual criteria, the implied median is 0.5x revenue, against 1.1x across 1,051 IT services deals. The nine integrators and service providers among them come out at 1.0x, with a median EBITDA margin of 16 percent, and the two distributors, with thin margins, priced at a small fraction of revenue.
The margin bridge makes the trade plain. At 5x EBITDA, a company with a 10 percent margin sells for 0.5x revenue and one with a 20 percent margin for 1.0x. At the IT services median of 10.4x, the 10 percent margin company would be worth about 1.0x revenue.
An average of normalized EBITDA across years prices a fast-growing business on a base below its latest year, and the net financial position is added or deducted, so cash in the business raises the equity price euro for euro. The 5x prices the majority stake bought at closing; the stake you keep is bought later, on terms tied to the results you deliver.
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How Sesa Structures a Deal
Sesa usually buys a majority and leaves the founders a minority. Of the 41 acquisitions with a stated stake, 30 were majority stakes below 100 percent, most often 60 or 51 percent, and 11 were for the whole company. The founders keep their stake and, in the words of several releases, their top management roles.
The rest of the company changes hands later. Releases describe put and call options for the progressive purchase of the remaining shares, earn-outs linked to the continuity and growth of the business, and payment of the price over several years. In one distribution deal, the sellers’ option on the remaining 49 percent ran in two tranches, in 2019 and 2020, at a price that included a share of the profits earned from 2018 to 2020, with Sesa able to pay in its own shares under a 12-month lock-up.
Sesa also pays in shares when it suits the deal. In 2024 the founders of an energy-systems distributor swapped their remaining stake for shares in the Sesa subsidiary that absorbed it, and in 2026 Sesa bought the last minority stake in Base Digitale with its own treasury shares, on its usual valuation criteria, with a three-year lock-up.
The deferred commitments add up: at January 2026, Sesa carried €150.5M of liabilities to minority shareholders of acquired companies, including €27.2M of deferred prices, and €122.5M at July 2026. For a founder, that figure is the second half of the deal: the formula, the period and the measure behind your remaining stake decide what it will be worth.
Larger deals in distribution have needed clearance from the Italian competition authority, and the purchase of a regulated financial servicer needed Bank of Italy approval, so the timetable for those runs longer. Deals with corporate sellers carry a commercial side: Var Group’s purchase of a software house owned by Conad’s retail cooperatives came with a four-year partnership with Conad, and a 2022 banking software deal kept the corporate partner as a shareholder for at least ten years.
What Happens After Closing
Sesa runs a Corporate Integration Team that brings each new company into the group in waves, covering human resources, IT systems, legal and corporate affairs, and administration and finance. The founders keep running the business: one release commits the founders to their roles for at least ten years after closing, and a 2026 deal commits the sellers to at least four financial years.
Acquired companies tend to keep their names. Yarix, Datef, Palitalsoft, Albalog, Durante & Sangalli and Centotrenta Servicing all appear under their own names in Sesa’s 2026 integrated report. Others fold into larger units as the group reorganizes: an SAP consultancy bought in 2024 joined Var Group’s SAP business unit, and the two energy-systems businesses merged as PMGREEN.
Over time Sesa buys out the minorities: its plan for fiscal 2027 and 2028 calls for buy-outs of minority interests to simplify the group. It also sells what falls outside its focus: in 2026 it sold its stake in a TeamSystem sales agency to TeamSystem and a minority holding in DV Holding.
Sesa’s Fixed Multiple Next to Private Equity Bids
In our view Sesa is the default consolidator for Italian IT services and business software partners, and it now applies the same model abroad. It is one of the most active strategic acquirers of IT services companies worldwide in our ranking of IT services acquirers.
At home it competes with TeamSystem, Lutech, Lynx, DGS and Accenture for the same targets, and with private equity platforms building their own groups in Italian IT services. Those buyers price differently: a private equity platform can pay more at closing and offer a rolled stake sold again at its exit; a strategic with a premium capability gap can pay a market multiple or more. Sesa’s fixed reference multiple makes it, for a fast-growing business, a low bidder on the day of signing.
Is This a Good Time to Sell to Sesa?
Sesa is buying less: four IT services acquisitions in 2025, against 12 at the peak in 2022, and it now describes its strategy as organic growth plus targeted acquisitions with high added value. In the quarter to July 2026 its chief executive said the group was growing entirely organically. The budget is still there, about €60M a year for M&A, and so is the appetite in specific areas: SAP and enterprise platforms, data and AI, and Spain and Portugal.
The wider market is softer: IT services multiples have repriced this year, and private valuations follow the public market with a lag; the latest figures are in our IT services valuation multiples research. Demand holds up best for cybersecurity, AI implementation and vertical specialists.
For a founder who wants to stay, grow inside a larger group and sell the rest later, Sesa remains a sound choice in 2026, provided the terms of the second sale are right.
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