Seidor buys Impala while waiting to close the entry of a partner

The technology consultancy Seidor is advancing its strategy of selective acquisitions to strengthen and diversify its business areas and increase the size of the company. The group aims to reach a turnover of one billion euros in 2025, a figure that means doubling current sales, which in 2020 ---the latest data available--- reached 468 million euros. To accelerate its growth and meet these objectives, Seidor has been negotiating for months to bring in a financial partner who could buy around 30% of the group for 150 million euros.

The company, now 100% controlled by the Benito family, is one of the largest specialists in the implementation of SAP business software. It was born and is headquartered in Vic (Osona), but its central offices are located in Barcelona's 22@ district. The company has just announced the acquisition of Impala Networking Solutions, also based in the Catalan capital and with a presence in Madrid. With this integration, the consulting and technology solutions group takes a firm step to position itself in the market for corporate communication services, workplace security, 5G, cloud environments, and infrastructure for data storage centers, areas in which Impala is a specialist in integrating systems developed by multinationals such as Cisco.

"The integration of Impala represents an opportunity to reinforce and strengthen our company's communications, networking, security, and connectivity unit, covering a greater diversity of clients and better addressing their needs in terms of technological solutions," explained Seidor's CEO, Josep Benito, the youngest of the three brothers who own the group.

According to Seidor, the acquisition of Impala will be accompanied by the creation of a Communications Competence Center that will serve its international subsidiaries. Seidor's Communications business unit, still very small within the group, reaches a turnover of 20 million with this operation and adds more than 120 employees. "We are at a time when DataCenters, workplaces, and growing cloud services require better communication and security capabilities. With this acquisition, new avenues are opened for Seidor to cover the information technology needs in these areas," Benito noted.

The until now general director of Impala, Oscar Andreu, will continue to lead the new Impala Seidor and will also be the director of the Communications area of the group, which has direct presence in 39 countries in Europe, Latin America, the United States, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. "Hand in hand with a benchmark partner in the IT sector like Seidor, this operation allows us to increase our commercial muscle and, with it, reach a greater number of clients, penetrating new geographical markets, both in Spain and abroad, while multiplying our capacity to attract talent," says Andreu. 40% of Impala's clients are from the public sector.

Seidor also emphasizes that with Impala it becomes a Gold Partner of Cisco, a seal that will add to its character as a prominent partner of SAP, Microsoft, IBM and Adobe. The Catalan group now has a workforce of 6,000 employees and a portfolio of 8,000 clients.

In the middle of last year, it emerged that the Benito family hired the financial services and investment banking group Alantra to seek a minority partner that would allow them to activate a new phase of growth based on larger acquisitions, both outside and inside Spain, with the challenge of doubling their turnover in four years, to one billion euros. According to El Periódico de España, Peninsula Capital, a fund led by the former president of Endesa, Borja Prado, could have been chosen by the Benito brothers to negotiate the operation, which has not yet been officially announced.