Wilmington Regulatory News (WIL)

29 March 2016

Wilmington plc

Acquisition of Evantage Consulting Ltd

· Evantage will strengthen Analytics offerings across Wilmington's Healthcare business

Wilmington plc ("Wilmington" or "the Group"), the knowledge leader in Risk & Compliance, Finance, Legal, and Insight, announces the acquisition of Evantage Consulting Ltd ("Evantage" or "the business"), a leading UK-based provider of specialist Healthcare and Pharmaceutical Analytics solutions.

Wilmington, through its healthcare analytics subsidiary NHiS, the provider of business intelligence and data analysis to the pharmaceutical industry has partnered with Evantage for over five years.

The acquisition will sit within Wilmington's Insight division and will enhance its healthcare analytics offer to UK and overseas clients; areas in which Wilmington has been seeing strong growth. Evantage brings specialist knowledge and experience in the analysis of healthcare admissions, pathway and treatment data as well as industry-leading competence in customer engagement and optimisation solutions for the Life Sciences sector.

Wilmington is paying an initial £1.4m with a deferred cash consideration of up to £4.6m by 2020 based on stretching profit based targets. The transaction will be financed out of the Group's existing £65.0m multi-currency debt facility. It is expected to be earnings enhancing in the first full year of ownership.

Information on Evantage

Evantage was established in 2001 by Julian Snape and Chris Wiggins to provide outsourced analytics and resource optimisation solutions for the UK pharmaceutical industry. Today, it also delivers solutions to international clients in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Julian and Chis will continue in the business post acquisition.

In the year to 31 October 2015, Evantage reported revenues of £1.1m (1) and profits before tax of £0.9m (1).Gross assets were £1.2m (1).

Acquisition rationale

The acquisition of Evantage is consistent with Wilmington's strategy of acquiring complementary businesses with high repeat revenues and strong, cash generative income streams in the Group's key markets. Evantage enhances Wilmington's analytics capability specifically in healthcare and its addition is central to Wilmington's goal of harnessing insight from multiple information sources to deliver competitive advantage to its extensive healthcare, pharmaceutical and life sciences client base.

(1) Unaudited accounts for the year to 31 October 2015

Commenting on the acquisition, Pedro Ros, Chief Executive Officer of Wilmington, said:

"I am delighted to welcome Evantage to Wilmington. With this addition to our Group we advance one of our strategic objectives of building our competency in healthcare analytics which will allow us to be even better placed to deliver our clients the insight they need to optimise their businesses."

Julian Snape and Chris Wiggins, founders of Evantage, commented: 

"We are very pleased to now be part of Wilmington and we look forward to contributing to a growing healthcare analytics portfolio and to collaborating on behalf of our common clients to deliver real benefits to their businesses."

Notes to Editors

Wilmington plc is the recognised knowledge leader and partner of choice for information, education and networking in Risk & Compliance, Finance and Legal as well as the Insight leader in a number of chosen industries. Capitalised at approximately £225 million, Wilmington floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1995.