Successful ownership transition despite turbulent times

Alfa Kommun & Landsting faced a natural change of ownership when principal owner and chief executive Håkan Matsson passed away in 2019. The family members who took over his shareholding decided they did not wish to continue running the company and instead initiated a process to find a new owner. The company had approximately 30 employees and a turnover of approximately 47 Mkr with headquarters in Malmö and an office in Stockholm. The challenge was to complete a sale during a period when the business climate was being pressured by the coronavirus pandemic, which created uncertainty about the future and affected stakeholders' view of a company's value.

Grant Thornton in Malmö conducted a comprehensive sales process. After reviewing the company, Grant Thornton initially identified around 25 potential buyers. Of these, just over ten were selected for further presentations and meetings with Alfa. Grant Thornton identified and presented Alfa's strengths, including its fully scalable business model, flexible offering, strong market position in digital solutions for healthcare, attractive customer portfolio, and high proportion of recurring revenue. The key to closing the deal was finding a buyer with knowledge of the healthcare sector's current and future digitalisation challenges. The choice ultimately fell on the Dutch fund Main Capital Partners, which specialised in software companies in the healthcare sector and had recently begun establishing itself in Sweden. The deal was completed on 31 March 2020.

The deal was successfully completed despite the coronavirus pandemic's impact on the business climate. Alfa was a good case study with software focused on the ongoing and future digitalisation of the healthcare sector, which made it possible to complete the sale during turbulent times. Main Capital Partners gained strong confidence in Alfa and had the opportunity to significantly expand the customer base in its home markets (the Benelux countries and Germany), where integration of selected parts of the companies' software offering could take place fairly quickly. Albert Winter was appointed as the new chief executive of Alfa in connection with the transaction.