Siemens Mobility has signed a binding agreement to acquire Dutch public transport inventory management, reservation and ticketing software-as-a-service company Sqills for €550m.

The transaction is expected to be completed in Q1 2022, after which Sqills would be managed as separate legal entity and wholly-owned subsidiary of Siemens Mobility. Sqills co-founder Bart van Munster said the deal was ‘a tremendous opportunity that allows Sqills to advance its plans to expand beyond Europe into Asia-Pacific and the Americas’.

Announcing the agreement on August 5, Siemens Mobility explained that Sqills’ S3 Passenger platform would be an important addition to the portfolio of journey planning and fare collection software from its Hacon, eos.uptrade, Bytemark and Padam Mobility businesses.

Roland Busch, President & CEO of Siemens AG, said ‘Sqills supports our own growth path for digital services and is a great example of applying our capital allocation criteria through targeted acquisitions. It also fits perfectly to our recently announced focus on generating recurring revenue through resilient business models such as Software-as-a-Service.’

Founded in 2002, Sqills now employs 160 people, and has a forecast revenue of around €40m for 2022. Its software is used by 33 operators in various countries, including Eurostar, France’s SNCF, Ireland’s Iarnród Éireann, the UK’s Rail Delivery Group, Sweden’s SJ and Canada’s Via Rail.