Bravura Solutions' Sonata hits high note at 20-times profit

Private equity-owned Bravura Solutions will seek to raise $200 million for its initial public offering before the end of the month.

Brokers Goldman Sachs and Macquarie Capital kicked off the marketing program with face to face meetings in Melbourne and Auckland on Monday. Their analysts also released detailed pre-IPO research reports and setting investor price expectations at 16-to-20-times forecast profit and up to 16-times adjusted EBITDA, as Street Talk revealed.

Small cap fundies are familiar with the story. Bravura was listed for almost a decade before Ironbridge and management took the financial services software company private in 2013.

It’s now preparing to return to market with $100 million invested in Sonata; what it calls the market benchmark in software for the wealth management industry, and more staff in more countries.

Sonata took 10-years to build and allows clients to replace multiple legacy platforms with the one system. Bravura already has 17 wealth management clients using Sonata and its rollout is forecast to fuel the company’s growth. Ironbridge is expected to retain most of its shares – worth 87 per cent of the unlisted Bravura – at the float.

Sonata will play a key role in determining how much support Bravura will receive for its re-listing. It was a pipe dream when fundies last ran the ruler on the stock, but appears de-risked now the platform is in use.

It will also help that fund managers are familiar with the sector and the type of back-office and software support required in their own sector.

As always, the float will live and die on its price. Goldman and Macquarie told clients to compare it to rival GBST Holdings, which has traded at 15-times to 20-times forward profit in recent years. Its comparable peer group also includes IRESS, Link Group, Computershare, MYOB and MainstreamBPO.

Bravura is expected to tell fundies that the big difference between it and its closest comparable – GBST – is Sonata. GBST is about to embark on a similar project, called Composer, but is only just starting out, while Sonata is up and running.

Goldman and Macquarie both say the company is worth up to about $430 million. Bravura is preparing to come to market with no debt, with funds raised from the listing to pay down existing debt.

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Source: Bravura Solutions’ Sonata hits high note at 20-times profit | afr.com