The founder of essensys plc is bidding to take the PropTech firm private with the backing of high-profile investors Sir Terry Leahy and William Currie.
A vehicle led by Mark Furness, who remains essensys plc’s largest shareholder and handed the CEO reins to COO James Lowery in May, has made a bid of 27 pence per share – valuing the company at around £11.3 million.
That is below the 20p/£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.
Furness founded the firm in 2006 and it floated in 2019 at a valuation of £72.6m, raising £28m from investors. Its share price peaked above 300p in 2021.
It has a current market cap of £11.67m – its share price currently stands at 18p after a recovery this month – but the price remains more than 50% down over the last year.
Based in London, essensys is a software and cloud service provider for the flexible workspace industry.
It reported a sharp fall in revenues for the year to 31st July 2025, but returned to EBITDA profitability following cost-cutting measures and a strategic reshaping of the business.
essensys’s independent directors – not including Furness – have recommended unanimously that shareholders accept the cash offer or agree to exchange their public shares for shares in the prospective private company.
Furness, Leahy and Currie have agreed to invest in further shares should a private company be formed and also to make a £450,000 equity investment.
essensys plc says it has received backing for the deal from holders of 57% of shares in the firm, which operates across London, New York, Sydney and Amsterdam.
“I founded essensys almost 20 years ago and remain its largest shareholder,” said Furness. “In recent years, we have undertaken significant work to reshape the business – strengthening our digital experience capabilities, deepening relationships with blue-chip global customers and materially improving our cost base and operational discipline.
“essensys Platform has been repositioned to meet evolving market needs, and elumo, following a long and complex development journey, is now at the beginning of its commercial rollout.
“However, trading volatility and continued weakness in the company’s share price mean that, in my view, essensys cannot sustainably continue as a quoted company in its current form. The costs, constraints and short-term pressures associated with a public quotation are increasingly disproportionate to the company’s scale and to the investment required to realise the opportunity ahead.
“I believe essensys now needs to operate as a private company with greater agility, a lower structural cost base and a longer-term horizon. Together with other longstanding investors, we are providing additional capital to strengthen the balance sheet and support this transition.
“This offer provides essensys shareholders with the opportunity either to realise their investment in cash or to elect for the share alternative and continue the journey with us in a more stable, private company environment.”
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