Montabaur, July 10, 2015. United Internet AG today reached an agreement with the owners of home.pl S.A. (Szczecin, Poland) – led by the private equity fund V4C Eastern Europe – regarding the acquisition of all shares in home.pl by United Internet’s subsidiary 1&1 Internet SE.

home.pl employs 240 people and currently has over 300,000 customers. With expected annual sales of around EUR 25 million in 2015 and an expected EBITDA in 2015 of around EUR 10 million, it is the clear market leader in the Polish webhosting market.

The purchase price of all shares in home.pl amounts to around EUR 135 million in cash – subject to adjustment at closing. The interest-bearing liabilities of the company (approx. EUR 20 million) will be repaid at closing. The share purchase is still subject to the usual approval of the relevant anti-trust authorities. It is planned that home.pl will continue to operate as an independent company under the leadership of its current management team. Together with the United Internet brand 1&1, which has already been operating in Poland since 2010, the aim is to gain further ground on the Polish market and strengthen the company’s leading position in Europe.

Now that the European webhosting/cloud computing market has largely been carved up, United Internet plans to focus more on acquisitions in future – in addition to organic growth. With its successful takeovers in the past years of InterNetX, Sedo, fasthosts, united-domains, Arsys and now home.pl, United Internet has already gained extensive experience in this field.

Against this backdrop, United Internet plans to examine the possibility of an IPO for its “Business Applications” segment in the coming months, for which it expects sales of around EUR 600 million in fiscal 2015. Should the result of this examination be positive, an IPO is to be launched in approx. 2 years.

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