GENUI acquires majority stake in Magnolia and invests in future growth

Basel, Switzerland, July 27, 2022 - Investment company GENUI and Magnolia, a leading software vendor in the global digital experience and content management markets, today announce that GENUI acquires a majority stake in Magnolia and injects significant growth capital into Magnolia.

Magnolia is an emerging vendor pioneering the vision of “composable” Digital Experience Platforms (DXPs). DXPs sit on top of content management systems (CMS) and enable brands to orchestrate compelling digital experiences across multichannel customer journeys and devices. The global market for DXPs is forecast to reach 23 billion US dollars by 2028, with an average annual growth rate of above twelve percent from 2021 to 2028.

Magnolia already serves clients in more than 100 countries through nine regional offices and counts many global brands such as The New York Times, Sanofi, Sainsbury’s, Ping An and Bechtle as its trusted customers. With the funding, the company will continue the expansion of its global sales and marketing footprint including its technology and channel partner ecosystems, accelerate product innovation and increase global market awareness.

Traditionally, DXPs have been purchased as a complete suite of marketing software from one vendor. These have proven to be slow, expensive and restrictive. “Magnolia is uniquely positioned to allow customers to integrate their key applications and platforms - from legacy to modern APIs - and compose a powerful digital experience architecture enabling the overall ease-of-use and agility now expected of modern cloud solutions.” comments Magnolia CEO, Tim Brown. “With GENUI's support, we will now be able to fully leverage our recognition as a “Visionary” in the 2022 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for DXP to help an increasing number of marketers, authors and developers deliver fantastic multichannel digital experiences."

"By significantly strengthening the capital base, we are putting Magnolia in a position to even better exploit its market potential and sustainably increase its growth," says Boris Klenk of GENUI. Upon completion of the transaction, the entrepreneur Amit Shah, an established expert in the digital experience industry, will become Chairman of the advisory board of Magnolia. “We are seeing a shift away from monolithic application solutions toward modular approaches. This is an exceptional strategic opportunity for Magnolia, which offers a future-proof composable digital experience platform for the enterprise," comments Amit Shah.

Exiting investor Elvaston Capital Management GmbH secured a majority stake in Magnolia in 2017, which GENUI is now acquiring. "We have accompanied Magnolia during an extremely positive and high-growth phase in recent years," says Dr. Oliver Thum, Managing Partner at Elvaston. "We are pleased that the company will now take the next steps with GENUI."

The purchase price and other details of the transaction were not disclosed. GENUI was advised on this transaction by CMS (Legal) and Baer & Karrer (Structuring), while Morrison Foerster (Legal Germany) and Walder Wyss (Legal Switzerland) acted as advisors to Elvaston.

About Magnolia

Founded in 1997 with a vision to create the first truly open content management system, Magnolia is a world leading digital experience company. Brands who want to move fast and stay flexible choose Magnolia because the company blends the power of an enterprise DXP solution with headless agility. Magnolia operates globally with offices on five continents and more than 200 Magnolia-certified partners around the world.

About Elvaston

Elvaston is an investment company specializing in small-to-medium sized enterprise software companies in Europe. Elvaston accompanies profitable companies in various segments of enterprise software and focuses on organic growth as well as buy & build strategies.

About GENUI

GENUI is a company founded by renowned entrepreneurs and investment professionals who believe in “Good Entrepreneurship”. GENUI exclusively makes long-term commitments to companies with the goal of creating sustainable growth and social value. Companies are given professional governance by getting access to entrepreneurs with industry-relevant expertise and their corresponding networks.