London global events specialist acquires international counterpart for £21m

London based global events business Hyve is acquiring 121 Group Limited, an omnichannel meetings programme organiser across EMEA, North America, and APAC, for an initial consideration of £21m.

121 Group Limited and 121 Partners limited are focused in the mining sector, with their head office situated in Hong Kong. This allows Hyve to expand their area of operation. The estimated total consideration after earn-out is expected to be between approximately £42m and £50m.

Hyve also announced it has placed 13,818,698 new ordinary shares in the company to raise gross proceeds of approximately £14.79m, representing approximately 5.21 per cent of the company’s existing issued share capital, with institutional investors.

The placing shares have been placed at a price of 107 pence, representing a discount of 0.7 per cent to the closing market price on November 17 2021.

Mark Shashoua, CEO of Hyve, commented: “I am very pleased to announce the strategic acquisition of 121 Group, a market-leading one-on-one meeting provider for the mining sector.

“This well-established company is highly complementary to our Mining Indaba event, while further accelerating our Group omnichannel offering and providing further profitable growth opportunities.”

Toby Duckworth, 121 Group founding partner, added: “We are delighted to join Hyve Group with its global portfolio of market-leading events. We look forward to further growing our series of events with Hyve’s support and leveraging the digital capabilities Hyve is building as part of its omnichannel strategy.”