House of Control announces intention to apply for listing on the Merkur Market Stock Exchange

House of Control, a Viking Venture portfolio company, has announced its intention to apply for listing on the Merkur Market Stock Exchange. The company intends to raise a private placement up to NOK 650 million in new and existing shares. House of Control has already secured backing from cornerstone investors Luxor Capital Group, Berenberg Bank, Consensus Asset Management, Handelsbanken Fonder og DNB Asset Management.

Since 2016, House of Control has seen an annual growth in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) of 33 per cent from sales of cloud-based software for CFOs. The solutions give the clients overview of legal and financial details and liabilities on contracts and assets. The net proceeds will be used to fund the Company’s inorganic growth opportunities.

–We continue to have very high ambition for organic growth for many years going forward. Effects from acquisitions will come on top of this. We have built a proactive and highly scalable sales organization, and through acquisitions, we will have an even broader product range. We are convinced this will both increase our reach to new customers and boost up-sell among existing customers, says Lasse Sten, CEO of House of Control

Five cornerstone investors

Five cornerstone investors, have, subject to certain terms and conditions, undertaken to subscribe for and be allocated shares for NOK 325 million as follows: (i) Luxor Capital Group (NOK 150 million); (ii) Berenberg Bank (NOK 50 million); (iii) Consensus Asset Management (NOK 50 Million); (iv) Handelsbanken Fonder (NOK 50 million) ; and (v) DNB Asset Management (NOK 25 million).

Viking Venture is lead investor in House of Control owning 56% of the shares before the transaction.

If subject to successful completion of the Private Placement and with the necessary approvals from the Oslo Stock Exchange, the first day of trading on Merkur Market is expected to be around October 20th, 2020.

House of Control

House of Control develops and sells Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions. The main product is Complete Control, which is used for managing contracts and assets, including the contracts’ financial implications for budgeting and reporting. Complete Control has several modules and add-ons, including compliance with IFRS 16 (Financial Leases) requirements, HR management, digital signature and price index adjustments. The customer value proposition includes cost cutting, time saving, business risk reduction and key personnel dependency. The Group has recently expanded its product scope and proven its inorganic growth capabilities through the acquisition of dinERP AS. The Group has mainly subscription-based revenue model with over 90% of the revenue being recurring. Non-recurring revenue is related to initialization fees incurred for both new sales and upselling.

Company highlights

• Best of breed commercial value management software allowing CFOs to have better overview of revenues and obligations
• Niche software offering with an addressable market NOK 8.9bn and no direct competitors
• Proven recurring revenue model with NOK 132m ARR as of Aug-20 and 33% organic ARR growth p.a. from 2016 to 2019
• Strong SaaS Metrics with +95% gross margins and +90% share of recurring revenue
• Positioned for further organic and non-organic growth – identified and initiated contact with several potential M&A targets throughout Europe