Siemens buys railway software company Sqills for 550 million euros

The logo of German industrial group Siemens is seen in Zurich, Switzerland January 30, 2019. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann

ZURICH, Aug 5 (Reuters) – Siemens (SIEGn.DE) is buying railway software company Sqills, the German engineering and technology firm said on Thursday, its latest acquisition to expand into high-growth markets outside of its main activities.

The industry-training software maker will pay an initial €550 million ($651.09 million) for Sqills, a software-as-a-service provider whose cloud-based products include software inventory management, reservation and ticketing.

Sqills expects revenues of around €40 million in 2022 and provides services to 33 operators, with customers including SNCF, Channel Tunnel operator Eurostar and Irish Rail.

The Netherlands-based company has developed a platform that allows rail and bus operators to replace their old reservation systems with an online reservation system that increases the use and availability of passenger transport, said Siemens.

The acquisition is part of Siemens’ strategy to accelerate revenue growth by providing more products and services that combine the real and digital worlds.

At its Investor Day in June, Siemens said it wanted to enter additional markets generating annual revenues of 120 billion euros through a combination of organic growth and acquisitions. Read more

The $700 million acquisition of electronics component vendor Supplyframe in May is an example of the strategy unveiled by recently appointed chief executive Roland Busch. Read more

“The acquisition of Sqills is a perfect example of how Siemens combines the real and digital worlds to empower its customers to transform,” Busch said in a statement.

“At the same time, Sqills supports our own growth trajectory for digital services and is a great example of applying our capital allocation criteria through targeted acquisitions.”

($1 = 0.8447 euros)

Reporting by John Revill; Editing by Cynthia Osterman

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