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Climb Advisors Weekly M&A Deals Newsletter
Deloitte acquires Giant Machines, Objectway invests in Nest Wealth
Nick @ Climb
January 28, 2024
Welcome to Climb Advisor’s weekly deal newsletter highlighting transactions announced last week across the B2B tech landscape.
Climb Advisors is an M&A and credit advisory firm focused on B2B software and services companies in the range of $5m to $50m+ enterprise value. We guide CEOs and business owners through the process of selling their business & assist investors in sourcing & closing great deals. We love to talk markets and share beneficial information - please reach out any time.
Deloitte acquires Giant Machines to accelerate product development and delivery
Overview: Deloitte announced a deal to acquire NYC-based Giant Machines, a software engineering firm of 119 employees. Deloitte gains a team skilled in large-scale product design and development - critical for fulfilling the strategic needs of clients. Read more here.
Climb Comment: Talent-focused acquisition here for Deloitte, adding more than a hundred engineers and architects focused on ‘concept to code’ projects with global enterprises. Deloitte has the developer capabilties to complete any-sized projects in a range of technologies and disciplines, but adding a huge leverage point here with senior-level engineers that specialize in strategic planning of digital projects for the world’s largest companies. Giant Machines CEO Roy Yang to join Deloitte as principal.
Toronto based Nest Wealth acquired by Objectway
Overview: Nest Wealth is a provider of digital wealth solutions for onboarding, account opening, and financial planning to some of Canada’s largest banks. Objectway supplements their already broad range of banking, wealth and investment management software & add high profile clients. The Italian acquirer will also gain a stronger foothold in North America as Nest Wealth’s team of 80 will be retained. Read more here.
Climb Comment: Great deal here with several levels of mutual benefit. Nest Wealth is a digital onboarding & management platform for wealth managers & bankers. Founded in 2014 and with most recent funding of $50m CAD in 2020, Nest Wealth proved itself as a leader in the Canadian market, serving a number of the countries’ largest financial institutions as well as global customers. Objectway offers an even broader range of software products for wealth managers and banks and boasts a strong footprint in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Objectway adds a skilled team & complementary product in a beachhead market with significant opportunities to cross-sell back into existing base.
Mobile reCell bolsters Apkudo’s IT asset recovery offerings
Overview: Mobile reCell has developed software that helps companies automate the recovery, reuse, resale and recycling of their IT assets such as smartphones, tablets and laptops. This software is expected to tie in nicely with Apkudo’s current platform, which manages supply chain automation for these assets and other connected devices, to maximize their value, minimize labor costs and reduce e-waste. Mobile reCell’s full team of 28 will also join Apkudo post transaction. Read more here.
Climb Comment: Issuing, reissuing, recalling, and otherwise managing employee technology devices grows constantly as a need for enterprises, especially those who work in a distributed environment. Great combination of platforms here, with Mobile reCell focused specifically on the recovery and disposition phase of the cycle and Apkudo as a broader platform that services the entire interface between employees & company-issued devices. Interesting about Apkudo is that they seem to offer an in-platform marketplace & rating engine for IT assets that companies wish to offload.
PSG Equity acquire majority stake in Visit Group
Overview: For the second week running we see a hospitality tech deal, with PSG Equity announcing they’ve acquired a majority stake in Visit Group for €100M ($108.7M). The Swedish company provides hospitality and travel software to help vendors package, sell, distribute, and deliver excellent guest experiences. This investment will be used to broaden the range and depth of solutions they can offer customers and marks PSG’s first platform investment in Sweden and Norway. Read more here.
Climb Comment: PSG moves into the Nordics and acquires a new platform in the hospitality space. Visit Group offers digital commerce and ticketing solutions to ski resorts, hotels, ferry and tour operators, and more. PSG has holdings in hospitality software, as well as digital payments and vertical commerce platforms. Scandinavia has a developed vertical software aggregator ecosystem and it’s interesting to see a new firm enter the mix. Seems to suggest rising multiples globally - but could just be a deal that makes a lot of sense on its own.
Leading edtech software provider PowerSchool acquires Allovue
Overview: PowerSchool (NYSE: PWSC) provides cloud based software for financial management, analytics, and workflow capabilities allowing schools, districts and education leaders to accurately plan budgets and gain visibility around spending and the impact it has on students. They reinforce this suite of solutions by adding fellow edtech provider Allovue, who provide financial planning, budgeting, and analytics software for K-12 schools in the US. Read more here.
Climb Comment: PowerSchool provides a broad suite of most of the software needed to run a public K-12 school district and here adds a robust platform for managing budgets in the same. Allovue integrates with ERPs like PowerSchool & others to analyze data and automate budgeting for districts of any size. PowerSchool trades around a 7x revenue multiple at a market cap of $4.8B. Good to see them make another acquisition after their $300m deal for SchoolMessenger in October.
Report of the week
Whether you work or just have a mild interest in the world of M&A, Pitchbook’s annual report is a must read. Filled with detailed analysis and breakdowns of M&A activity in 2023 across a wide range of markets and sector, you can find the link to download it here.
Additionally, we would highly recommend reading this article by OnlyCFO detailing Airtable’s acquisition of Airplane, along with the events and funding rounds that led up to this deal. As you’ll see it certainly wasn’t your average startup journey.
Thanks for following along & hope you found something useful or interesting.
All the best,
Nick