Technicis Buys Arancho Doc As Consolidation in Europe Continues

Technicis is putting its private equity funds to good use. The Paris-based language service provider (LSP) has acquired Italian LSP Arancho Doc. The deal already closed in July 2017. Technicis chose not to disclose the purchase price.

Both companies operate a number of offices in Europe but Technicis CEO Benjamin du Fraysseix told Slator the geographical footprint was complementary. “We see almost no overlap, but (there’s) a lot of cross-selling opportunities,” he said.

The acquisition comes just a few months after Arancho Doc acquired Milan-based LSP Soget in March 2017. At the time, Soget added 19 full-time employees (FTEs) to Arancho Doc’s 83 FTEs. Including Arancho Doc, Technicis now employs 330 employees, according to du Fraysseix.

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Asked if discussions between Arancho Doc and Technicis had already been underway at the time of the Soget acquisition, du Fraysseix stressed that they “did not even know Arancho Doc before March 2017” and that they first learned about the company through a presentation by an Arancho Doc executive at industry conference GALA.

“We did not even know Arancho Doc before March 2017” — Benjamin du Fraysseix, CEO, Technicis

As we reported mid 2016, when Technicis acquired Swiss-based Translation-Probst, Technicis was founded in 1995 by current CEO Benjamin du Fraysseix’s father Éric du Fraysseix.

In 2011, Benjamin du Fraysseix assumed leadership of the company. In early 2016, French private equity firm Naxicap acquired a majority stake alongside Benjamin du Fraysseix in a leveraged buyout.

With Translation Probst and Arancho Doc tucked in, du Fraysseix told Slator he intends to continue to grow via acquisition. “[Our] next move might focus on [companies] above EUR 10m revenue per year, in Europe or North America,” du Fraysseix said.

“The market is global, growing quickly, and concentrating on big “human size” players,” he said. “We believe the perfect size is 500 FTEs in Europe, North America, and Asia, serving clients with state-of-the-art technology.” In terms of target clients, du Fraysseix wants to focus on companies with annual revenues north of EUR 100m.

Finalizing Management Matrix

The French LSP posted EUR 30m (USD 35.8m) in revenue in 2016, and du Fraysseix projects around EUR 45m (USD 53.7m) in global revenues for 2017, which will include five to six months of consolidated revenue from Arancho Doc.

Arancho Doc will be managed as a separate entity, but it will “quickly get the best of Technicis existing technology and operations support,” according to du Fraysseix.

Danilo Monaco, who assumed the leadership role at Arancho only in January 2016, will also remain as CEO, as Technicis is “in the process of finalizing its global management matrix.”

Asked to comment on what translation productivity tools and translation management technology the two companies use and whether there are plans to streamline, du Fraysseix said Technicis “uses the most commonly used on the market — Trados / Transit” but did not elaborate further.

On what’s next for the language services industry, the Technicis CEO said that he sees “limited risk on full automated translation, being very complex. Still, we dig into the three blocks of technology: Translation Management System (TMS) / Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), TM, and machine translation (MT).”