Jonas Dhaenens recently stated that team.blue, featured in Vintage Odyssey Altaroc 2022, could achieve sales of around 750 million euros this year. The profits of the group, spread across various European countries, are not publicly known, but the company is said to have a valuation of 4.8 billion euros. team.blue is a major provider of digital solutions, mainly in Europe.
The impressive valuation of team.blue stems from the sale of a block of shares by the main shareholder Hg to the Canadian pension fund CPPIB. Hg had originally acquired these shares in 2019 for around 700 million euros and has since continued to invest in the company. According to Joris Van Gool, partner at Hg, the return on this investment is "at the top of our usual performance", with significant sales growth.
Jonas Dhaenens explains: "We have no intention of implementing a short-term dividend policy. We are continuing to work on a growth strategy that will increase shareholder value over the long term. We aim to double our value over the next four to five years."
With its impressive growth trajectory and forward-looking strategy, team.blue continues to consolidate its leading position in the European technology market.
Although team.Blue started out as a web hosting company in Belgium, it is gradually evolving into a pan-European provider of online tools and services for SMEs. The company employs over 2,500 people, including around 180 in Belgium, and offers its solutions to 3.3 million SMEs and entrepreneurs in 22 countries.
Excluding acquisitions, team.blue achieves a profit margin of at least 40%. Indeed, Joris Van Gool and Jonas Dhaenens confirm that team.blue far exceeds the "rule of 50", which stipulates that the sum of the growth rate and EBITDA margin of the best companies must exceed 50.
Like many large technology companies, team.blue had humble beginnings. Founder Jonas Dhaenens began his career in 1999, at the age of 16, offering web hosting services for his father's insurance company. Over the years, his company Combell has become a major international player, expanding throughout Europe. 25 years after launching Combell from his bedroom, Jonas Dhaenens continues to transform the Belgian technology landscape. His company has become a pan-European powerhouse.
team.blue's services include domain registration, email, shared hosting, e-commerce solutions, server hosting, as well as various SaaS products such as compliance, marketing tools and team collaboration products.