Parkeon and Cale join forces
Parkeon, the world’s leading parking and ticketing services provider, and Swedish-based Cale, have joined forces to create the leading global technology company for enabling urban mobility.
More than 5,000 cities in over 70 countries rely on Parkeon’s and Cale’s robust systems for payment solutions and services.
The two companies, which entered into exclusive negotiations in November 2017 and officially combined forces on 11 January 2018, plan to access multidisciplinary skills for the research, development and practical implementation of IoT solutions to offer cities and parking operators all around the world innovative, secure and integrated smart urban mobility services.
The combined group plans to increase investments in its ongoing digital transformation and leverage on its global customer base with over 100 million weekly end-users.
Both the Cale and Parkeon brands would continue to be offered to ensure customers a seamless and reliable service during and after the contemplated transaction.
For the year ended June 30, 2017, Parkeon turned in €220m revenues and Cale €70m revenues. The combined group targets double-digit revenue growth for the upcoming 12 months.
The combination bolsters the two companies’ extensive international operations and the enlarged group has around 1,300 employees largely based in France, UK, Sweden and North America. Furthermore, it represents a good fit for the two companies’ regional strengths where Parkeon has strong market positions in Europe outside Scandinavia and in the rest of the world – particularly in emerging markets, while Cale has a strong presence in Scandinavia and North America. New sales efforts would be targeted on emerging markets in Asia, Middle East, Africa and South America.
With over 500 R&D engineers earmarked for innovation to consolidate the combined group’s market leadership, the contemplated transaction also adds to the palette of technical skills in hardware, software, sensor systems, machine-learning and AI, business Intelligence, Information Security, UI/UX design and mobile development.
Both Parkeon and Cale hold the highest level of PCI certifications for security and integrity purposes and manage over 400 million credit card and mobile payment transactions on a yearly basis.
Bertrand Barthelemy remains group CEO and Stéphane Roques heads up the new Smart City business arising from the combination with Cale. Anton Kaya, CEO of Cale, is Chief Operating Officer of the Smart City Business Unit and Owen Griffith continues to oversee Smart Transport.
Bertrand Barthélemy, Parkeon’s CEO, said: “This project seeks to bring about smarter digital-based consumer mobility, stability for our customers, and growth for our business and employees. I am proud and look forward to putting our planned combination into practice. This is a big step forward in the growth of our companies and for the future of the Smart City and urban mobility industry, while striving to create more pleasant, environmentally-friendly and safer cities where the economy is more vibrant and it is easier to move around. We are able to build on our world leadership in digital urban mobility services.”
Anton Kaya, Cale’s CEO, added: “The combination of the top two companies in our industry provides an amazing opportunity to bring together global scale, integrated technology, and diverse distribution to create a true market leader. This represents a new page in our history: looking forward, together we step up our ongoing campaign to digitalize our service offering. We strive to provide innovative and secure services for our customers, who have trusted us over the years, while ensuring an exciting future for our employees”.
About Cale
Cale offers innovative and efficient parking solutions. From the start in 1955, Cale has developed into a world leading brand within the parking business, with a turnover close to a billion SEK. Cale has subsidiaries, distributors and customers all around the world. Cale specialises in customising technology, may it be for parking terminals, mobile payment solutions, transaction handling or centralised software systems, and converts this into functionality, always with the highest possible focus on the parking operator as well as the driver.
About Parkeon
Parkeon is a key player in the area of urban mobility. By offering a unique range of solutions for parking management and transport ticketing, Parkeon now has operations in 60 countries and is accelerating growth in the emerging markets in Eastern Europe, Asia and South America. Its capacity to innovate continually is demonstrated every day. Parkeon Parking and Transportation solutions are facilitating mobility in more than 4000 cities.