Morning all, Craig McGlashan here with the Europe Wire from the London newsroom.
We’ve got two scoops to start the day, in the worlds of tech and healthcare.
First, THL Partners has agreed to acquire Queue-It, a developer of website traffic management software, from GRO Capital.
Next, Columna Capital has sold its majority stake in Swiss dental group Ardentis Cliniques Dentaires in a strategic exit. We’ve got details on the exit multiple on that one.
In line
THL Partners has agreed to acquire Queue-It, a developer of software aimed at managing website traffic congestion, from GRO Capital, PE Hub’s Rafael Canton revealed this morning.
Headquartered in Copenhagen, Queue-It is a cloud-based virtual waiting room for websites and applications to manage online traffic surges.
“This is both a business that is AI-defensible but also is receiving tailwinds from AI,” Jordan Welu, managing director at THL, told Rafael. “All of our diligence suggests agentic commerce is about 24 months away.”
Agentic commerce is a form of online and mobile shopping, where autonomous AI agents act on behalf of customers and businesses to complete tasks, such as researching, comparing and buying products. For example, you could use an AI agent to buy tickets for a performance on a particular date within a certain section of the venue and for a specified price range.
Queue-It’s software takes all humans and non-humans joining a virtual queue, then ranks them in order, generally based on when they’ve arrived.
“We don’t think of Queue-It as a cybersecurity business per se, but it enables key cybersecurity workflows, identifies malicious bots and blocks them from the queue or sends them to the back of the queue,” Welu said.
Founded in 2010, Queue-It’s customers cut across four different types of categories: ticketing businesses, governments, retailers and direct-to-consumer brands. Customers include Ticketmaster, Ikea, StubHub and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government. About 30 percent of Queue-It’s business is in the government category, Welu said.
Boston-based THL has plans for add-on deals with a global focus. “The strategy is not a consolidation strategy,” Welu said. “We wouldn’t be looking to acquire a company that is smaller or identical to Queue-It but offers additional functionality that helps with both the speed and security of these online transactions.”
There’s also the possibility of acquiring an AI-based agentic commerce-focused business over the course of THL’s hold, potentially creating a fifth vertical of customers.
In terms of organic growth, Queue-It has a US headquarters in Minneapolis and wants to expand its business in North America.
“If you talk to the CEO Jesper Essendrop or his managing team, they would say they’re still under-penetrated in North America,” Welu said. “They were clear early in the process that a North American sponsor would be interesting, both to help them continue to build out their team here, and engage with our operations group to help optimize their go-to-market strategy, particularly in North America.”
As Queue-It prepares for agentic commerce, it is working on integrating with its cybersecurity partners, which are both standalone private companies and very large publicly traded hyper-scalers, and content delivery networks.
Read the full article to learn how AI has changed THL’s investment approach.
Open wide
The fragmented Swiss dental market is an opportunity for private equity – and one where Columna Capital has made an exit.
The private equity firm has sold its majority stake in Ardentis Cliniques Dentaires to Medbase, PE Hub’s Nina Lindholm revealed this morning. The exit gave a low- to mid-teen multiple on clean EBITDA.
Columna got a price “the high-quality platform deserves,” Columna co-founder and partner Vilmos Pongracz told Nina.
Founded in 1993 and based in Lausanne, Ardentis is an integrated group of dental clinics in western Switzerland. Once Columna launched the sale process – which went out to a mix of strategics, private equity and flex equity – it received more than 10 bids.
Eventual winner Medbase is a healthcare service network that operates approximately 190 medical centers, psychotherapeutic practices, pharmacies and dental centers in Switzerland.
“It made absolute sense for Medbase from a size, geography and core value perspective to acquire Ardentis and effectively become the largest national platform in Switzerland,” said Pongracz.
The platform grew from 12 to 20 clinics under Columna’s wing, while the number of chairs increased from 77 to 149. Ardentis also completed 15 transactions across greenfields, brownfields, M&A and patient book acquisitions. The group operates its clinics in mainly prime urban locations, employing 450 people and servicing approximately 70,000 patients each year.
London-based Columna – a lower mid-market firm with a focus on Italy, France, Iberia and the southern DACH region – believes there is more potential in Swiss dental care. The market is dominated by single- or two-dentist clinics, and once these owners retire, larger platforms will benefit from the structural shift.
Secular trends, such as an aging population and fragmentation, also boost the appeal of the Swiss dental care market, said Pongracz. In Switzerland, dental treatments are not covered by mandatory public health insurance, and utilize a flexible tariff point scale, allowing clinics to factor in local infrastructure costs and wages. The country has one of the highest disposable incomes per household and one of the highest dental expenditures per capita in Europe, which in turn supports premium pricing, according to Pongracz.
Earlier this year, Julius Hugelshofer, director at Verlinvest, told PE Hub that dental resurfaced in 2025 as “one of the more attractive healthcare services specialties for private equity to back,” after several years of muted dealmaking.
Significant growth opportunities persist within the market, including orthodontics, Hugelshofer said.
“With more PE-backed assets having become serious about organic growth and the quality and integration of their estates, I expect assets to continue coming back onto the market in 2026, with valuations beginning to firmly settle in the low double-digits.”
Read the full article for more on how Columna grew Ardentis during the hold period.
That’s all from me today. Obey Martin Manayiti is in the US chair later today and I’ll write to you again from Europe tomorrow.
Cheers,
Craig