Munich/Venlo, November 7, 2019 – Office Depot Europe, a portfolio company of AURELIUS Equity Opportunities SE & Co. KGaA (ISIN: DE000A0JK2A8), completed the sale of its subsidiaries in the Czech Republic and Slovakia to PBS Holding AG on the closing date of November 6, 2019. The PBS Group is a leading distributor of office supplies, paper and stationary headquartered in Wels/Austria. The PBS Group supplies customers in Austria, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Italy, Slovenia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Sale of CEE business as part of ongoing transformation of Office Depot Europe

Office Depot Europe has made major progress in enhancing the efficiency thanks to process optimisations and system enhancements. Significant investments and organisational changes with respect to the Group’s e-commerce capabilities are being rewarded with favourable development of the online business. In this respect, a customer-centric strategy also entails further actions to extent the assortment. The divestment of the CEE business will be accompanied by the group further focusing its resources continuing the existing path in a dynamic market environment.

Other transactions expected in the coming months

In addition to this partial sale of a group subsidiary, AURELIUS successfully completed the sale of Solidus Solutions in early September. With this transaction, which is the biggest exit in the history of AURELIUS to date, AURELIUS achieved a multiple of 16.7 times capital employed. In October, AURELIUS also signed an agreement to sell its platform investment Scandinavian Cosmetics. This transaction should be closed in the fourth quarter of 2019 and will make a substantially positive contribution to earnings in the current fourth quarter.

“We are working intensively on other transactions, including both acquisitions and sales,“ said Dr. Dirk Markus, CEO of the AURELIUS Group. “Companies like the GHOTEL Group and HanseYachts AG, which we have successfully restructured and put on a course of profitable growth in the last few years, are particularly attractive exit candidates. But we are also active on the acquisition side and will expand the AURELIUS Group further by means of platform investments and strategic add-on acquisitions for existing portfolio companies.”