The acquisition of a majority stake in Greek e-commerce platform Skroutz by private-equity giant Blackstone values the company at roughly €635 million on an enterprise-value basis, according to people familiar with the transaction, underscoring growing investor appetite for digital infrastructure assets in smaller European markets. The valuation, which includes debt and other liabilities, places Skroutz among the most aggressively priced e-commerce deals in Southern Europe relative to its current earnings profile. Investors involved in the process say the price reflects confidence less in the company’s present profitability than in its ability to evolve into a broader regional digital-commerce and fintech platform.
Founded as a price-comparison website, Skroutz has transformed over the past several years into Greece’s dominant online marketplace, building out logistics, payments and fulfillment capabilities designed to emulate larger international platform models. The company now operates a vertically integrated ecosystem spanning e-commerce infrastructure, merchant services and financial technology.
Financial disclosures for 2024 show Skroutz generated €131.1 million in revenue, with earnings before interest and taxes of €8 million and net profit of €5.1 million. Operating cash flow reached €24.5 million. The company held €45.2 million in cash against approximately €38.7 million in debt, effectively leaving it in a net cash position.
Even so, the deal implies valuation multiples rarely associated with mature retail businesses. Based on last year’s revenue, the transaction values Skroutz at roughly 4.8 times sales, significantly above the levels typically assigned to traditional European retailers or established e-commerce operators. Assuming EBITDA of about €15 million, including more than €7 million in depreciation and amortization, the valuation translates into roughly 40 to 42 times EBITDA.
On a net-income basis, the implied multiple exceeds 120 times 2024 earnings, highlighting the extent to which buyers are underwriting future growth rather than current profitability. Market participants say Blackstone is effectively valuing Skroutz as a scalable digital ecosystem with substantial operating leverage potential, rather than as a conventional online retailer.
The investment thesis appears to rest on several pillars: Skroutz’s dominant share of the Greek e-commerce market, its increasingly sophisticated fulfillment and logistics network, and the expansion of fintech operations through payments subsidiary EveryPay. Investors also point to the company’s regional ambitions in markets including Cyprus, Romania and Bulgaria, where online commerce penetration remains below Western European levels.
The transaction also marks the likely end of a lengthy investment cycle for CVC Capital Partners, which acquired a 44.9% stake in Skroutz in 2020, when the business was still transitioning from a comparison-shopping engine into a full-service marketplace platform. People close to the deal estimate that CVC is recovering most, if not all, of the capital invested at the time, though without generating the kind of outsized returns typically associated with venture-capital-backed technology exits. During CVC’s ownership period, Skroutz invested heavily in warehouse infrastructure, fulfillment operations, fintech services and technology systems—moves that expanded the company’s operational scale but weighed on short-term returns.
