5 Months After Selling, Apax Reinvests in idealista

The Spanish-headquartered real estate portal company idealista has today announced that its former majority shareholder Apax Partners is to reinvest €250 million in the company after previously selling its stake in September for €1.3 billion.

According to an idealista press release distributed this morning, Apax is to pay €250 million for a 17% share in the company which represents a valuation of the portal company of €1.47 billion. The news comes just 5 months after the same private equity firm sold its 80% share of the same company to EQT for €1.3 billion in September of 2020.

Since EQT's acquisition of idealista in September the portal company has made significant moves, selling a 12% stake to Oakley Capital late last month and before that acquiring rental management software firm Rentger and #3 Italian property portal Casa.it. Throughout the exchanges of equity, company founders and management have kept a significant minority share in idealista, and will continue to do so according to today's release.

The newly strengthened company, which is now a clear market leader in Spain and Portugal and with a very strong position in Italy, as well as a sanguine market outlook in southern European property markets are apparently what prompted Apax to reinvest in idealista.

Commenting on his company's not-so-new investors, idealista Founder and CEO Jesús Encinar said:

"We are very happy to welcome back Apax Partners and Tom Hall back to idealista. Very few funds have such a deep understanding of our industry."

Tom Hall, Partner at Apax said of his company's reunion with idealista:

"We are very excited to reinvest in idealista, after the enriching experience of having worked closely with Jesús and the rest of the team since our investment in the company in 2015."

It was widely reported that Apax sold up back in September after becoming frustrated with a lack of progress towards a potential idealista IPO. With proptech company valuations expected to grow over the next few years and a flock of them having recently gone public, it may be interesting to see if idealista looks to position itself for a public debut in the coming 18 months.