Acquisition of mezzanine financing, sale of part of shares

eSKY.pl S.A. is an Online Travel Agency (OTA) offering a comprehensive set of travel products and services, ranging from airline tickets and travel insurance to hotel reservations, car rentals, and train tickets. The company and its subsidiaries operate in European, South American, North American, and South African markets. eSKY specializes in the sale of airline tickets over the Internet, and the company has developed and continuously improves its own technological solutions for selling travel services online and providing high-quality customer service, which enables it to quickly and efficiently build a strong market position. eSky offers services in more than 50 global markets. The eSky Group is a member of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) group of agents. The proprietary eSky Travel Search enables travelers to purchase tickets of more than 1,000 regular, low-cost, and charter airlines, book accommodation in more than 1.3 million hotels and apartments worldwide, rent a car, and purchase travel insurance. Syntaxis Capital is a mezzanine fund focusing on investments in growing companies operating in the markets of Central and Eastern Europe. The fund has so far invested in dozens of entities from various sectors of the economy. Since its inception in 2006, it has arranged, underwritten, and led mezzanine investments in transactions with a total value of several billion euros.

Deal timeline

• July 2014: the mezzanine fund Syntaxis Capital invested EUR 11.5 million in eSKY.pl, mostly as mezzanine financing and partly as a direct equity investment in the company.
• July 2014: a small part of the funds was used to buy out one of the company’s minority shareholders.
• July 2014: according to press reports, the fund valued eSKY.pl at about PLN 200 million, or 17 times EBITDA.

Service: Raising capital and investors