EQT has made a takeover bid for Fortnox

Automatic translation: Originally published in Finnish on March 31st, 2025 at 11:03 AM EET. Please note that the automatic translation currently only covers the text visible here and may contain errors. You can provide feedback on the translations here.

On Monday, private equity firm EQT and Fortnox's largest shareholder, First Kraft, announced a public tender offer for Fortnox, a Swedish company offering cloud-based financial management and payroll software.

At the offer price of SEK 90 per share, Fortnox is valued at approximately SEK 54.9 billion. The company is estimated to generate approximately SEK 2.5 billion in revenue this year with an EBITDA margin of approximately 54%. Consequently, based on this year's estimates, Fortnox's valuation in the tender offer corresponds to approximately 22x EV/S and nearly 41x EV/EBITDA. Based on the figures for 2024, the corresponding multiples would be approximately 27x and 61x.

Fortnox has a very strong history of profitable growth, and the company has practically always been priced significantly higher on the stock exchange than other Nordic software companies. The company is also expected to continue growing at over 20% in the coming years with very high margins. In light of this, the high valuation is justifiable, but the multiples paid in the deal are extremely high in absolute terms.

For comparison, Talenom, which competes with Fortnox in some of the same markets in Sweden, has a valuation (2025e EV/S 1.8x, EV/EBITDA 6x) that is on a completely different planet, although the company's growth and margin profile is also clearly weaker than Fortnox's. Admicom, which to some extent belongs to the same group of Nordic financial management and ERP SaaS software companies, trades at 6.5x EV/S and 19x EV/EBITDA multiples for this year. Lemonsoft, which falls into the same category, trades at 3.5x EV/S and 13x EV/EBITDA multiples. The combination of growth and margin at both Admicom and Lemonsoft clearly lags behind Fortnox's superior pace, and the lower valuation is justified. In the big picture, the offer made for Fortnox is a reminder of the kind of valuations people are willing to pay for software companies at their best.