Baird is advising Waterland Private Equity Investments on the sale of Dutch educational devices provider The Rent Company BV, with a lender education undertaken in the last two weeks, sources told Reorg.
Private equity investors are considering bidding for The Rent Company, which generates EBITDA of about €13 million, sources said. Indicative bids for the company are due this week, added a source.
The Rent Company is attractive to investors as it operates in a niche sector, sources said. However, it is a capital expenditure intensive business primarily renting out laptops, which requires high levels of annual investment, the sources added.
Direct lenders may therefore face challenges providing the financing, a source said, with banks more likely to provide the debt needed to support the company’s future growth.
In 2019, Waterland
acquired The Rent Company from fellow private equity firm BB Capital, with Baird advising the company on the deal.
The Rent Company provides educational devices, including laptops under a full-service package called Easy4u, to secondary school students in the Netherlands, Belgium and the U.K.
Based in Den Bosch, the Netherlands, the company provides laptops to more than 200,000 students in more than 500 schools, according to its
website.
Waterland Private Equity Investments and Baird did not respond to requests for comment by time of publication.
-- Nick Krause, Lucía Camblor