What is Questel?

Questel is a global, fast-growing Intellectual Property (“IP”) information and management specialist.

What does Questel do?

Questel is an end to end IP solutions provider, offering a comprehensive software suite for searching, analysing and managing inventions and IP assets. Their offering mainly consists of providing access, on a subscription basis, to clients to their IP Business Intelligence (IPBI) and IP Asset Management (IAM) tools

The Opportunity

Why IK invested in the business:

• Solid company in a highly resilient and growing space – Questel operates in the highly attractive intellectual property SaaS space. The market for these verticals has grown at an annualised rate of 6-7%, with the Questel growing organically at 11-12%
• Diversified, top quality customer base – Questel has a very high quality and sticky customer base across the three verticals. The client list is also highly diversified, with mostly Fortune 500 clients
• Mission critical business with sticky and price inelastic customer base – for Questel’s key customers, IP management is a key part of their business and the risk of any of these going wrong / getting delayed is very high as it could, for instance, lead to a delay in a product launch

Why we like the investment

“Questel’s technology-led solutions enable its customers to research, protect and manage their intellectual property assets efficiently, in what is an increasingly complex and global intellectual property market. Serving a diversified customer base in the resilient, non-cyclical intellectual property market, Questel has a high proportion of recurring revenues with attractive forward visibility. During IK’s ownership period, we expect Questel to continue to invest in developing its first rate customer proposition, both through continued M&A and new product development.” – Alistair Watson, Senior Investment Director, abrdn.