(Bloomberg) -- Activist fund Petrus Advisers is pressuring TeamViewer AG executives to end the group’s frequently criticized sponsorship deals with football club Manchester United and the Mercedes Formula 1 racing team.
Petrus called the sponsorships a sign of hubris and “appalling judgment” in a letter to the German IT services company’s Chief Executive Officer Oliver Steil and finance chief Michael Wilkins.
Disclosing a stake of just below 3% in TeamViewer, Petrus said it had been advocating for months in private and that it wouldn’t tolerate the company spending more than €70 million ($73 million) -- about 1.4 times its net profit -- on the deals.
“You are not SAP, Oracle or Mercedes,” Petrus Managing Partner Klaus Umek and partner Till Hufnagel said in the letter dated Wednesday. “Yet, you do not seem to get it.”
TeamViewer, a remote working software business whose valuation soared during the coronavirus pandemic, is reportedly paying Manchester United £47.5 million ($57 million) annually until 2026 as a shirt sponsor. That makes it one of the costliest sponsorship deals for a European football club, and one that’s drawn criticism from analysts. TeamViewer is also expected to spend millions of euros on a five-year contract with the Mercedes Formula 1 racing team.
A spokesperson for TeamViewer said the company continuously assesses its need to invest in its brand and the visibility of its products against the company’s strategy, as well as the macro-economic outlook. TeamViewer already announced it wouldn’t prolong its Manchester United partnership beyond the initial term, and has also communicated its desire to look at amending the existing contract, the spokesperson said.
Shares in TeamViewer rose as much as 3.3% in early trading on Thursday. The stock was up 2.6% at 9:21 a.m. in Frankfurt, giving the company a market value of €2 billion.
Bleeding Millions
In August, Steil said he wouldn’t renew the Manchester United contract, a step Petrus thinks isn’t enough to fix the firm’s cost base.
“We demand that you stop bleeding millions and rapidly disengage from this mess,” Petrus said in the letter, which was reviewed by Bloomberg News. “We therefore demand that you enter professional exit discussions with a clear goal of a quick solution and that you do it immediately.”
Founded in 2005, TeamViewer offers remote computer access tools to customers in about 180 countries. The company plans to further expand in Europe, Asia and the US, including adding to its offerings to help large corporate customers connect mobile phones and tablets to machine sensors, smart farming equipment and wind turbines.
The deals with Manchester United and the F1 team were supposed to help build a global brand, but TeamViewer has struggled with large rivals entering the market and the work-from-home boom waning.
Once a rising star among German tech companies, with a market value topping €10 billion at its mid-2020 peak, TeamViewer’s appeal has faded over the past year and a half. Its March 2021 Manchester United deal triggered a profit warning shortly thereafter, with the firm citing a “significant increase in marketing expenditure.”
‘Even Ronaldo’
Analysts have frequently criticized the sponsorships as too costly for TeamViewer.
“TeamViewer (and the market) is still searching for a new base after drastically scaling back its mid-term ambitions a year ago,” analysts from Kepler Cheuvreux said in a recent note titled ‘When even Ronaldo cannot save you,’ alluding to Manchester United’s striker.
In one of its recent campaigns, Petrus successfully pushed for an improved offer from Advent International and Centerbridge Partners for German real estate lender Aareal Bank AG. At Swiss banking software firm Temenos AG., the fund is calling for a leadership change and strategic review, including a potential sale.
(Updates shares in seventh paragraph.)
©2022 Bloomberg L.P.
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