Adonix has bought 100% of Italian holding company Progetto Integra, which owns 87.23% of Gruppo Formula. The combined company will have a workforce of 1,500 employees and 150m euros ($192m) in annual revenue. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The takeover requires approval from the Italian antitrust authorities.
Privately owned Adonix’ flagship product is the X3 ERP suite, which is aimed at midmarket clients. The company made an operating profit of 16m euros ($20.5m) in 2004 on revenue that grew 41% to 92.3m euros ($118m) driven by acquisitions of software companies in the logistics, human resources, and finance space.
Torino, Italy-based Gruppo Formula has 600 employees and made revenue of 55m euros ($71m) in 2004. The company claims to have the largest installed base of ERP systems in Italy, and like Adonix, focuses on small and medium-sized clients.
There has been a lot of M&A activity among Europe’s ERP vendors in recent years as strong national and mid-market players struggle to stay on top of the R&D costs required to keep them competitive against larger vendors such as SAP and Oracle, which are increasingly targeting smaller organizations.
Prior to the Gruppo Formula deal, Adonix last year acquired Spain’s largest human resources software vendor Meta4. German ERP vendor Infor Global Solutions acquired local rival IncoDev last September, and in April 2003, Microsoft bought the Nordic region’s largest player, Navision.
