LONDON, UK: Oakley Capital has reached an agreement to sell its stake in Facile.it, Italy’s largest online price comparison platform, to Silver Lake, a bourse filing noted.

Oakley Capital Fund III invested in Facile.it in 2018, alongside EQT Private Equity. During the course of the investment the business has continued to pioneer the Online Price Comparison market in Italy, developing innovative products that save its users hundreds of millions of euros every year.

Over time, Facile has expanded its diversified product offering and unique omnichannel distribution proposition that underpin its long-term growth trajectory, allowing it to benefit from the continued market digitalisation and e-commerce penetration.

Today, Facile.it reaches a base of over four million unique monthly users via an end-to-end seamless experience across its website, 39 stores, and over three thousand agents, and has grown its EBITDA by more than 20% on average over the last four years.

Facile CEO, Tobias Stuber, commented: “On behalf of the Facile management team and all employees, I would like to thank our investors EQT and Oakley Capital for the successful, collaborative, and highly productive partnership over the past four years on our journey towards capitalising further on our position as a landmark destination for Italy’s household spending. Thanks to the support of our investors, we are in an even better position today for the next phase of our growth with our new partner Silver Lake.”

Oakley Capital Managing Partner, Peter Dubens, commented: “Our successful investment in Facile has built on our deep expertise investing in digital marketplaces including price comparison websites. We would like to thank Tobias and his team for their hard work in growing the business over the last four years, delivering vertical diversification and significant customer growth.”

Oakley Capital Investments Limited (OCI) announced that Oakley Capital Fund III reached an agreement to sell its stake in Facile.it, Italy’s largest online price comparison platform. OCI’s share of proceeds will be c.£53 million and the sale represents a c.23% premium to the 31 March 2022 carrying value, an uplift of c.6 pence per share to the Company’s NAV. OCI’s liquid resources available for future deployment (including this transaction) are estimated to be c.£200 million.