Dains provides due diligence services to Kerv Group Limited

Deal summary

Dains Corporate Finance provides due diligence services to Kerv in support of the acquisition of cloudThing. Kerv, a Cloud Centric Managed Service and Infrastructure Transformation Provider, has announced the acquisition of cloudThing, a market leader in digital transformation and specialist in Microsoft Dynamics & Power Platform plus Bespoke Software Development.

Following the acquisition of cloudThing, the combined group is now a £35m revenue business with more than 330 employees, serving over 800 customers, with offices in London, Birmingham, and Bangalore, India. Whilst continuing its focus on strong and sustainable organic growth, the company will also look at acquiring businesses which add new capabilities to further enhance its cloud and digital credentials and/or bring new vertical opportunities.

Explaining the rationale behind the deal, Alastair Mills, executive chairman at Kerv, said: “This acquisition is a significant step for Kerv and a major investment in the rapidly growing digital transformation market. We are combining our existing cloud managed services and infrastructure transformation capability with cloudThing’s digital transformation proposition thanks to their combination of DevOps, Data Science, and software engineering services. Every aspect of cloudThing - from its strong organic growth model, culture, people, leadership and approach to customers - makes it an ideal fit for the Kerv group.”

Kerv was formed in July 2020 in partnership with mid-market private equity house, LDC, to build a cloud-centric business model focused on the provision of IT managed services, DevOps, digital transformation and cybersecurity.

cloudThing was founded in 2012 and has become a major UK digital transformation success story by helping businesses take advantage of the powerful technology available in the cloud.

What our client said

Andrew Marshall, Group CFO of Kerv said “We used Dains to perform financial due diligence for us on what was a very material and strategically important acquisition for the group. This was the first time that I have used Dains and I was very impressed by their level of knowledge and responsiveness. They brought forward a number of key findings that helped us better understand the target, and they were good at ensuring key matters were identified, prioritised and resolved.”

What we said

Rob Wilson, Senior Manager at Dains said “We were delighted to have the opportunity to support Kerv and LDC in their acquisition of cloudThing. We had worked with cloudThing previously so we were able to use our prior knowledge of the business to provide Kerv with a high quality due diligence report which focused on key issues such as the underlying profitability of the business and the strength and quality of their forward-order book. ”