Ljubljana - GoOpti, a provider of shared and private shuttle transfers to airports and between towns, is being taken over by the International Strategic Ventures investment fund from Oman, Delo reported on Friday. The value of the deal is not known, while founders Marko Guček and Tomaž Lorenzetti will stay in the company for now.

Guček has told the newspaper that the acquisition had already been coordinated, signed and implemented.

Not much is known from publicly available data on the acquirer, whose portfolio features investments in environmentally and socially friendly solutions. The fund is registered in Oman, while investors come from various countries.

While the value of the deal has not been revealed, the financial statements from GoOpti show that the company's assets were valued at some EUR 670,000 in 2020, which is a drop of more than 50% compared to 2019.

According to Delo, an added value in the acquisition was technology for planning of routes to airports, developed by GoOpti.

Past year has been turbulent for the transport sector, and GoOpti was forced to cut staff, with around 20 employees expected to end 2021 with the new owner.

In 2018 and 2019, GoOpti made EUR 39,000 and EUR 30,000 in profit, respectively, while last year it generated a EUR 77,000 loss. Revenue dropped from EUR 5.8 million in 2019 to EUR 1.6 million last year.

Guček told Delo that the company's current turnover was 15% of that before the Covid-19 pandemic, while he believes in renewed growth and success of new services once airports and the tourism sector are back to normal.