The founder of essensys plc has agreed a deal to take the PropTech firm private with the backing of high-profile investors Sir Terry Leahy and William Currie.
Amid a restructuring of the business, essensys also this morning reported shrinking profits and falling revenues in its latest half-year results.
A vehicle led by Mark Furness (pictured), who remains essensys plc鈥檚 largest shareholder and handed the CEO reins to COO James Lowery in May 2025, made a bid of 17 pence per share – valuing the company at around 拢11.3 million – and this has now been accepted by the company鈥檚 independent board.
It is below the 20p/拢13m price mooted when it was first revealed that Furness was preparing a potential bid in late November 2025; however it represents a premium of approximately 9.7% to the closing price per essensys share of 15.5p at that time.聽
Furness founded the firm in 2006 and it floated in 2019 at a valuation of 拢72.6m, raising 拢28m from investors. Its share price peaked above 300p in 2021.
Based in London with operations in New York, Sydney and Amsterdam, essensys is a software and cloud service provider for the flexible workspace industry.
Furness, Leahy and Currie have agreed to invest in further shares should a private company be formed and also to make a 拢450,000 equity investment.
It has a current market cap of 拢10.58m after shares dropped in early trading this morning following the announcement of the takeover agreement and results.
For the six months ended 31st January 2026, positive adjusted EBITDA was 拢100,000, down from 拢800,000 in the corresponding period a year before.
Revenue reduced by 25% to 拢7.8m, which essensys said was primarily due to the continued downsizing of a single large strategic customer – as previously guided – as well as 鈥減roperty portfolio rationalisation as customers focus on their more profitable sites and the anticipated impact of churn from both our smaller non-strategic customers and from our cloud business鈥�.
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essensys said it had implemented restructuring to enable greater focus on its essensys platform and elumo, a new dynamic booking and access control platform for meeting rooms in flexible workspaces, co-working spaces and office buildings.
The first cohort of elumo sites are now live, it said, adding: 鈥淐ustomer interest remains strong, although elongated sales cycles and slower adoption rates impacted sales in H126.鈥�
essensys remains debt free with net cash of 拢900,000 at 31st January 2026. Discussions remain ongoing to secure a debt facility.
CEO James Lowery said: “Although we have experienced financial headwinds over the past six months, we have made significant progress in executing our strategy with a clear focus on meeting the needs of our customers, while driving new customer acquisition.聽
鈥淲e have restructured the business to provide greater focus across our two core products, transformed our customer support function and successfully delivered the first cohort of elumo customers.聽
鈥淎longside this, we have maintained a disciplined approach to capital allocation and operational efficiency while continuing to invest in the development of our solutions. These actions have established a solid foundation for future growth.
“The period has also seen the recommended cash offer for the company from our founder Mark Furness. The independent directors believe that this offer will facilitate clear strategic and operational benefits for essensys’s internal and external stakeholders, including the employees and customers of essensys and provides a fair and reasonable value and a certain exit opportunity for shareholders.”