Indra acquires SIA and creates the leading cybersecurity services firm in Spain and Portugal

Indra, one of the major global technology and consultancy companies, has acquired SIA, a firm specialized in cybersecurity services, thus establishing itself as the leader in the information security market in Spain and Portugal in terms of the turnover of its value-added services.

SIA is a company with its own product and scalable capabilities for the delivery of services and the development of advanced cybersecurity solutions in Europe and the rest of the world. It owns a diversified and stable customer base with more than 10,000 security projects, and is the domestic leader for identity and electronic signature solutions.

The company foresees a 2019 EBIT margin of 9%, with estimated revenues over €60 million in 2019, and annual cumulative increases in sales that have exceeded 15% over the last two years. EV/EBIT 2019 (E) including synergies for the acquisition is around 7x.

Digital disruption is leading to a true revolution in the different sectors of economic activity and in society in general, bringing great benefits and unprecedented progress but also risks in the areas of privacy and security, risks that must be properly managed.

The combination of the cybersecurity businesses of Indra company, and SIA, is positioning itself as a platform on which it can capitalize on the excellent prospects of the market, a sector that is undergoing transformation, with a high level of demand, constant growth (the Spanish market is expected to grow by almost a double digit figure by 2023) and a high degree of fragmentation in Spain, Europe, and LatAm.

Indra, even more so now following the incorporation of SIA, seeks to become the trusted partner, with a high degree of specialization and autonomy, of companies and institutions in the protection of the country's critical private and public infrastructures, including cyberdefense.

“The integration of SIA and Indra’s cybersecurity business creates a specialized leader in this market, with a wide-ranging and integrated offering and a global presence that enables it to respond to global threats. The new entity will be supported by a team of more than 1,000 highly qualified professionals and cybersecurity experts, made up of specialized consultancy teams in different but highly complementary areas. This leadership and its desire for growth also gives the combined entity a great capacity to recruit talent”, according to Cristina Ruiz, Executive Director of Indra and IT business Senior Vice President.

“It’s a personal and professional satisfaction for me and for the team to have developed a company of SIA’s reputation over 30 years. I’m very grateful to our customers and professional staff. SIA and Indra share the same vision of the cybersecurity market and we have the will and talent to create a global leader. The combination of the two organizations places us in a unique position in the market to meet the needs of our customers and professionals”, explained Enrique Palomares, founder of SIA.

The joint range of products and services that SIA and Indra can offer entails a major benefit for their current and potential customers as a result of its breadth and market leadership. It thus generates a series of major synergies based on the leveraging of the sales networks, capitalizing on Indra’s vertical focus and SIA’s specialized approach in Spain and Portugal and on the ability of Indra’s sales and marketing network to position SIA’s product on the international stage.

This offer is enhanced by the highly complementary nature of the customer base and the business, with significant areas of specialization, such as:

• Identity and access management solutions. These are related to the governance of the corporate identity life cycle (customers, employees, devices, etc.) and they have a significant degree of complementarity in the target user, as Indra addresses the final consumer and SIA the company or employee user.
• Electronic signatures (eSign). Solutions and cloud services for electronic signatures and the legal certification of signed documents. The joint entity has the opportunity to market SIA’s products in new regions (Mexico, Colombia and Italy, among others) by using Indra’s platform and experience. Similarly, the complementarity of Indra’s capabilities and SIA’s ownership of signature and identity solutions eliminates the need to resort to third-party products.
• Integrated risk management. Integrated management of corporate risks for decision-making processes. In this area of the proposition, the joint approaches and the work of Indra’s business consultancy and SIA’s risk management will generate a differential value proposition capable of competing with the offers of global leaders in technological risk consultancy.
• Infrastructure security. Protection of critical infrastructures (companies’ networks, databases and information technology devices).
• Threat and vulnerability management. Solutions and services to identify, evaluate and mitigate security weaknesses and responses to incidents. In this segment, Indra’s own-technology management services can accelerate SIA’s international expansion plans.
• The combination of Indra’s anomaly identification platform and SIA’s fraud operation service to identify fraudulent activity (applied, for example, to PSD2, the European regulation on electronic payment services).

The new entity has also welcomed Luis Álvarez as CEO to lead the integration and the domestic and international growth plan in the coming years. Mr. Álvarez has broad experience in the sector, having been at the head of technological companies at the service of large customers with a strong international presence.

About Indra

Indra (www.indracompany.com) is one of the leading global technology and consulting companies and the technological partner for core business operations of its customers world-wide. It is a world-leader in providing proprietary solutions in specific segments in Transport and Defense markets, and the leading firm in Digital Transformation Consultancy and Information Technologies in Spain and Latin America through its affiliate, Minsait. Its business model is based on a comprehensive range of proprietary products, with an end-to-end, high-value focus and with a high innovation component. In the 2018 financial year, Indra achieved revenue of €3.104 billion, with 43,000 employees, a local presence in 46 countries and business operations in over 140 countries.

About SIA

Founded in 1989, SIA has achieved a solid reputation in the domestic security market. More than 700 talented professionals make up a team that passionately strives to secure the business of its customers on a daily basis. It possesses a clear vision of the future of the IT security industry in the corporate market. It develops transformational projects and services and builds long-term relationships. Further information at: www.sia.es