Equiteq advises Salesforce consultancy Pexlify on its sale to Dentsu
Public relations giant Dentsu Group has purchased digital consultancy Pexlify for an undisclosed fee. Deals advisory company Equiteq supported the Salesforce specialist with its sale.
Founded in 2015, Pexlify is a Salesforce and Mulesoft consultancy that employs 150 staff across offices in Ireland, Britain, Germany and Poland. The firm provides build, implementation, and integration services to clients including Allianz, Amazon, Bank of Ireland, and Zurich, across areas such as Salesforce commerce, marketing, sales, and service cloud solutions.
Tokyo-based Dentsu Group was attracted to this potential, as it has over 1,300 Salesforce trained staff itself, and over 3,000 Salesforce certifications aligned with Salesforce cloud capabilities. Part of this includes Merkle, its subsidiary focused on customer experience management.
The acquisition of Pexlify significantly deepens Merkle’s Salesforce, and according to a release by Merkle “demonstrates Dentsu’s commitment to enabling clients to deliver best-in-class experiences across the customer journey.”
The bolt-on also aligns with Dentsu’s ambition of reaching 50% of net revenue generation by customer transformation and technology work.
Margaret Wagner, EMEA President, Merkle, said, “Pexlify provides a fantastic opportunity for Merkle to significantly extend our Salesforce services – adding scale and capability and supporting our ambitions for growth in these important markets with our key strategic partners.”
Meanwhile, Pexlify’s joining of Dentsu and Merkle, opens up a world of possibilities, as part of a global organisation. Stephen Lambert, CEO, Pexlify, noted that with the “similarities in our values, culture, and ambitions,” joining Merkle would bring benefits and opportunities to Pexlify’s people and clients, as well as boosting its partnership with Salesforce.
Equiteq acted as financial advisor to Pexlify on the move. Regarding Equiteq’s role in the transaction, Lambert said that Equiteq was “an outstanding partner” for the firm. Having tasked Equiteq with finding a buyer, the team delivered “multiple attractive options” in just over four months, through “demonstrable trust and hard work and formidable access to different partner types.”
Jerome Glynn-Smith, Managing Director of Equiteq commented, “We’re honoured that Pexlify entrusted us with their transaction, opening a new chapter for the Pexlify team to deploy their high-quality client engagement model into the globally leading marketing performance agency that Merkle is. The best technology consulting teams that have built high impact and differentiated delivery will continue to attract transformational options for themselves throughout this decade of strong demand for digital transformation – that is the core of what we do at Equiteq.”
Equiteq is an international provider of strategic advisory and M&A services to consulting firms and the broader knowledge economy. The firm recently picked up two prizes at the International M&A Awards.
