Unifiedpost Group expands to the Baltics, Central and Eastern Europe with the acquisition of Fitek Group

News
02/04/2019
La Hulpe, Tallinn

Unifiedpost Group, one of Europe’s leading FinTech firms, acquires Fitek Group, the Baltics, Central and Eastern European market leader in financial automation processes. The acquisition of Fitek Group, with HQ in the Baltics, offers Unifiedpost Group an opportunity to expand its activities to 8 countries in Europe where it was not yet active. With this acquisition, Unifiedpost Group reconfirms its growth strategy through acquisitions and becomes a leading player on the European e-invoicing market.

Headquartered in Tallinn, Fitek Group is the market leader in financial automation processes in its region. Fitek Group is active on the professional market and provides solutions for automating and accelerating financial corporate processes. The invoice management systems FitekIN and InvoiceGate, for instance, facilitate invoice processing through various incoming and outgoing channels – on paper, pdf and e-invoices. Fitek Group is active in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, the United Kingdom, Slovakia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and exports its services to 20 countries. The Fitek Group employs a staff of 270 and reported a turnover of € 21.5 million in 2018.

Like Unifiedpost, Fitek Group is a growth company in the FinTech space (e-invoicing, financial process automation, electronic invoice workflow) and recently acquired the Lithuanian company SIS, and got onboard with the market leader in e-invoicing and digital printing activities in South-Eastern Europe (Serbia region). Fitek Group also announced an expansion of its activities to the United Kingdom and plans to launch a new European invoice portal for the SME market.
After the acquisition, the new pan-European group consisting out of Unifiedpost Group and Fitek Group will handle more than 300 million corporate documents on an annual basis, mostly invoices. The annual proforma turnover will exceed € 60 million (*).


With this takeover, Unifiedpost Group reconfirms its international growth strategy through acquisitions

“Joining forces means not only the creation of a major FinTech player across Europe, but it is a great deal for our customers, as well,” says Mait Sooaru, CEO of the Fitek Group. “More specifically, a widened product portfolio to serve our customers’ e-invoicing and payment service needs.”

The acquisition of Fitek Group is in line with a series of strategic projects of Unifiedpost Group to achieve its targeted growth . “Growth cannot be achieved only organically in a rapidly changing market. Our product lines, in particular for business payment processes, are ready for the future, new markets are looked-for to grow faster. To attain the necessary scale, we are taking the takeover route,” says Hans Leybaert, CEO of Unifiedpost Group.

In a rapidly changing digital world, Unifiedpost Group has managed to bring a total solution on the market for companies that need a digital platform to manage documents and payments in an optimal manner. This solution provides opportunities to integrate European companies which are active in the document business today and to expand the range of integrated solutions, i.e. “payments and financing”. The Fitek technology offers added value to the entire finance value chain and will create income synergies for the entire Unifiedpost Group.

Hans Leybaert, CEO of Unifiedpost Group: “Our ambition is to grow internationally and to further strengthen our position as a leading player in the FinTech landscape. With Fitek Group joining Unifiedpost Group, we not only expand our European footprint, but are also getting extra people onboard with solid knowledge of the sector.” The growth strategy of Unifiedpost Group is reconfirmed with this acquisition.

The new group will operate under the “Unifiedpost Group” name, but both Unifiedpost Group and Fitek Group will continue to operate in their respective markets under the brand names their clients are familiar with, “Fitek” in the Baltics, CEE and Nordics, and “Unifiedpost” in the Benelux countries.

 

About Unifiedpost Group

We are a leading FinTech company that helps businesses to digitize and optimize their financial value chain, in B2B(2C): from contract – over invoice – to payment, including alternative financial services. We develop and manage platforms for electronic payment collection, invoice financing and more, starting from "transactional document processing”.

Interesting facts and figures about the Unifiedpost Group:

- Established in 2002, with a proven track record
- 2018 consolidated turnover over € 32 million, predominantly recurrent
- 350+ FTE throughout Europe, of whom 90+ work in R&D
- 200 million documents processed per year
- Diverse portfolio of clients across a wide variety of industries (banking, leasing, utilities, media, telecommunications, travel, social security service providers, public organizations, etc.) ranging from large internationals to SME communities
- PAY-NXT payment institution recognized by the National Bank of Belgium
- Certified Swift partner
- International M&A track record

(*) Warning about future statements: The statements contained herein may contain forecasts, future expectations, opinions and other future-oriented statements concerning the expected further performance of Unifiedpost Group on the markets in which it is active. Such future-oriented statements are based on the current insights and assumptions of management concerning future events. They naturally include known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which seem justified at the time that the statements are made, but may possibly turn out to be inaccurate. The actual results, performance or events may differ essentially from the results, performance or events which are expressed or implied in such future-oriented statements. Except where required by the applicable legislation, Unifiedpost Group shall assume no obligation to update, elucidate or improve future-oriented statements in this press release in the light of new information, future events or other elements and shall not be held liable on that account. The reader is warned not to rely unduly on future-oriented statements.

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