eServGlobal is headquartered in Paris, France with its research and development, customer support organizations and sales organizations located in Paris, Grenoble, Bucharest, Dubai and Jakarta. More than 90% of its revenues come from the Middle East, North Africa and Southeast Asia markets. The company had sales of 7.1 million euro in 2018 of which 4.3 million euro is recurring fees. The product portfolio includes software solutions for distribution of recharge value for prepaid mobile phones and mobile financial services.

The acquisition strengthens SDS operational efficiency by increasing its product portfolio with complementary products from eServGlobal. At the same time two new major development and technology centers in France and Romania will be added.

The acquisition strengthens SDS's customer base and footprint adding several important and respected global and regional telecom operators such as Ooredoo Group, Zain Group and EITC (du Dubai). SDS will handle and process annully more than 10 billion transactions, worth more than 10 billion US Dollars.

"This is an important milestone in the growth of SDS as a company. In one single step we have now moved to a new strategic level in terms of size, revenue, profitability, customer base and geographical reach. SDS and eServGlobal combined have nearly 50 years of experience in development, delivery and operation of large-scale transaction systems with operational activities in more than 50 countries. This acquisition strengthens our presence in Africa and the Middle East further and at the same time provides opportunities to reach new geographical markets with customers in Southeast Asia," says Tommy Eriksson, CEO of SDS. "A new phase of our journey to attain sustained growth and profitability has now started and in the medium term we expect to be able to increase the company's operations in Europe and America as well"

The acquisition of eServGlobal have been financed by an acquisition loan arranged by Handelsbanken and a bridge loan from private investors including the Chairman of the Board Gunnar Jardelöv and the newly appointed board member Martin Roos. The bridge loan is for a period of 6 months from the date of the transaction. This bridge loan will cover the period until a planned new rights issue is completed based on the mandate the Board received at this year's Annual General Meeting on April 25th. The bridge loan has an annual interest rate of 15% and can be repaid in full or in part in advance.

The merging of operations between the two companies is expected to achieve significant synergies with high efficiency in product management and development as well as economies of scale in support and administrative functions. Significant business synergies in terms of profitability and growth are expected to emerge as early as 2020 but the full effect would be visible in 2021.