Climb Advisors Weekly M&A Deals Newsletter

Climb Comment: DaySmart started building software for the pet industry in 2005 and adds some great capabilities & 3,000 customers with their acquisition of Time To Pet, which offers a full-suite of management tools to owners of dog walking and pet sitting companies. These solutions are geared towards small shops and solopreneurs and currently offer no-card required free trial onboarding to win customers who likely are not using any dedicated platform to manage their business. Time To Pet currently lists pricing in the $30-$50/month/user range — DaySmart’s scale and mature customer acquisition channels will likely result in improved margins and should be cross-sell potential within accounts that offer grooming and more alongside pet-sitting. Nice example of a complementary feature set being acquired, and lots to like in the pet industry over the mid-long term.

Climb Comment: JSA takes a deep & comprehensive approach to marketing for their clients, typically data centers and global telco, by leveraging a media network two decades in the making which boasts a YouTube channel with almost 200k subscribers, podcasts with 20k+ downloads, and monthly online & in-person events. With this acquisition they add a premium client list & an experienced marketing team with deep industry knowledge. Worth noting that the two organizations have been partnering on projects for more than three years — collaboration and partnership done well give all parties the opportunity to plan for long-term success.

Climb Comment: NWN Carousel executes large enterprise UCaaS and managed service projects — working on projects as varied as migrating 3,000 MGM Resorts employees from in-office to home office work; building a connected ‘Smart Track’ at New Balance HQ; and helping a large healthcare org implement modern cybersecurity protocol following a breach. New State acquired NWN in 2015 and tripled revenue over the hold period, undoubtedly leading to a material outcome for all involved. American Securities will look to continue capitalizing on the shift towards AI-powered contact centers and increasingly complex IT services needs of large enterprise.

Climb Comment: Baker Tilly is a global top 10 CPA firm and has doubled headcount over the last 5 years, with revenue of $5.2B last year, up 11% from ‘22. Hellman & Friedman have almost $100B in AUM and are investing out of their tenth fund -a $24B facility. Notable deals from H&F include their 2022 take-private of Zendesk and their acquisition of SimpliSafe.

Tremendous deal here in professional services. Baker Tilly have proven they have the ability to grow at scale and this investment will likely accelerate that. Professional services, particularly accounting, is an area we have seen robust activity of late. For example, we also saw Platform Accounting Group raise $85m this week to support further acquisitions of boutique accounting firms across the country.

Climb Comment: PIX, a product of X2X, falls broadly under the umbrella of Media Asset Management (MAM), and provides secure workspaces to share large and complex files. The moves Killers of the Flower Moon and Barbie, along with numerous other major productions, relied on the PIX workspace to move creative through production. Sharing days worth of high resolution footage between studios around the globe is much more serious of an undertaking than it may appear at first, and even in the last few years much of this took place via physical tape sent by secure couriers. The ability to migrate these processes to digital saves time and resources for all involved.

Autodesk has grown through the years from a business mostly focused on CAD/design to a much more comprehensive platform that touches on any sort of complex file manipulation and collaboration, and looks to deepen their footing in media and entertainment with this deal. Will be interesting to see if the regulators let this through given recent shifts towards more aggressive antitrust action.