이 기사는 2021년 05월 06일 07시51분 thebell에 표출된 기사입니다

Affinity Equity Partners completed the acquisition of H&Q Korea’s JobKorea on Monday in a secondary transaction that valued South Korea’s No. 1 job portal at nearly 1 trillion won.

The deal valued the online recruiting company at an enterprise value of 900 billion won ($802 million), which represents about 17 times its 2020 earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) of 52.7 billion won. The company’s equity value is estimated at 950 billion won given its net cash position.

H&Q increased its stake in JobKorea to 100% over two years through 2015. The exit is expected to have achieved a money multiple of about 8.5 times.

The job-search platform was rumored in January last year to be up for sale after H&Q first mentioned in its report to investors a possible exit of its position in the company. The sale process started in earnest in October when H&Q sent out information packages on the company to prospective buyers who signed non-disclosure agreements.

In December, H&Q received non-binding preliminary offers from more than 10 bidders interested in the job portal, of which seven to eight bidders, mainly private equity investors, advanced to the final round of bidding.

CVC Capital Partners, TPG Asia, TA Associates were among the bidders with strong interest in the company. CVC Capital Partners was reportedly especially aggressive, raising its offer to meet H&Q’s valuation target of the company, which was 15 times EBITDA or higher.

The bidding heated up after Australia’s job-search platform SEEK joined the race. Many of the shortlisted private equity firms reportedly approached the strategic investor about a partnership.

In February, H&Q received final offers from most of the shortlisted bidders and allowed them to change their offers, hoping competition between bidders further raises the sale price. Then H&Q narrowed down the bidders to MBK Partners and Affinity Equity Partners.

Finally in early March, Affinity Equity Partners was named as the preferred buyer of JobKorea, and three weeks later the deal was signed. The firm obtained debt commitments from Mirae Asset Securities and KB Securities, and completed the acquisition on Monday.

“The JobKorea deal will be one of the most memorable deals this year,” said an official at one private equity firm in Seoul. “It is one of the representative deals involving platform businesses and also in the secondary space.”

Morgan Stanley acted as financial advisor to H&Q and Samjong KPMG provided accounting advice. UBS acted as financial advisor to Affinity Equity Partners and Samil PwC acted as accounting advisor. Lee & Ko and Bae, Kim & Lee acted as legal counsels to H&Q and Affinity Equity Partners respectively. (Reporting by Ar-rum Rho)