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- Climb's M&A Weekly: Blackstone, Vista, and Thoma Bravo all feature
Climb's M&A Weekly: Blackstone, Vista, and Thoma Bravo all feature
Blackstone and Vista acquire Smartsheet and Thoma Bravo backs acquisition of Street Context.
Nick @ Climb
January 26, 2025
Welcome back to the Climb Advisors weekly newsletter with five deals from across the B2B tech landscape. Sentiment is strong in the M&A community, with many expecting 2025 to be a record year in terms of deal volume & aggregate value. Valuations are strong & buyers are eager to deploy capital.
Climb Advisors focuses on sell-side advisory for B2B Software and services companies generating $5m-$15m in revenue. We also advise on credit placements and non-dilutive capital solutions for companies of the same profile & in select cases engage in retained buy-side processes for quality buyers. We love to talk markets and connect dots - please don’t hesitate to reach out if you’re a founder or investor looking to transact.
Blackstone and Vista team up for a take-private deal
Overview: Blackstone and Vista Equity Partners have announced completion of a take-private deal of Smartsheet, an AI-enhanced enterprise-grade work management program. The deal is valued at $8.4B with shareholders of Smartsheet receiving $56.50 for every share of common stock they held. The companies will work to expand Smartsheet’s solutions which allow organizations to collaborate seamlessly across projects and workflows. Read more here.
Climb Comment: The $8.4B valuation here reflects slightly greater than an 8x multiple on TTM reported revenue & a small (~8%) premium to recent share prices. Topline rev has been growing in mid teens % over the last few years. The stock has traded mostly flat over the past five years, peaking around $80/share in ‘21 and bottoming in the high $20s in ‘22. As of September ‘24 Vista & Blackstone combined owned around 10% of shares. No doubt they think they can cut to profitability and likely leverage AI for further functionality. SmartSheet seems to be somewhat of a FrankenApp, offering a wide range of project management/workflow capabilities, likely very sticky in complex/custom installs.
Blue Matrix, backed by Thoma Bravo, makes a play to improve distribution of its investment research
Overview: Blue Matrix, a financial research publishing and distributing company has acquired Street Context, which improves email for capital markets through intelligence and data analytics. The combined business will integrate financial data and analytics into a single platform to allow financial institutions to enhance road shows, prospecting, client coverage, and more by giving clients smarter and faster information. Read more here.
Climb Comment: Distribution is the idea here, with Street Context offering the only email solution specifically geared for the needs of capital markets firms, focusing on deliverability, compliance, ease of use, and integration with tools used by research firms & bankers. Street Context maximizes coverage for the sell-side and offers buyer profiles to keep buyers in the loop - leading 70% of users to state that using Street Context leads to additional client conversations each week. Great buy for Blue Matrix, kudos to all involved.
Bridgepoint completes take-private acquisition
Overview: Bridgepoint has completed a take-private deal of Eckoh, a provider of customer engagement data security solutions. Bridgepoint has acquired Eckoh at 54 pence per share($0.67). Bridgepoint is a growth investment management company specializing in private equity, private credit, and infrastructure with €67 billion in AUM. Read more here.
Climb Comment: Bridgepoint took Eckoh private at an equity value of £169m, slightly below 6x last-stated ARR numbers, or around 16x adj EBITDA. Eckoh focuses on providing data security & PCI/DSS compliance within the contact center market. The company also offers a robust set of digital payments functionalities - secure transfers across a range of channels. Seeing lots of secular growth in that space & Eckoh (& Bridgepoint) are poised to benefit. Contact center remains strong - Climb is active there coming off our Envision deal in August. If you’re in that space & looking to transact please get in touch.
Marcura adds to its extensive suite of maritime solutions
Overview: Marcura, a digital maritime solutions provider backed by Marlin Equity Partners, has bought Vesselman to expand its maritime digitization suite. VesselMan provides cloud-based software to the maritime industry that focuses on ship repairs, drydocking, and more. Marcura will integrate VesselMan into existing solutions MarTrust and ShipServ. Read more here.
Climb Comment: Maritime is a huge industry globally, with north of 11 billion tons of goods moving via ship annually, with that number growing each year. The industry is supported by more than 50,000 ships worldwide and >2 million seafarers + many millions more employed shoreside. Despite the size & criticality of the industry it has been shockingly slow to digitize, with paper, pen, and fax still being standard in many applications. Marcura is building an end-to-end digital vessel management platform and the addition of VesselMan contributes towards that.
Tortuga Growth Partners backs a merger pairing AI and banking
Overview: Tortuga Growth Partners, a private investment firm has announced an investment in the merger of SmarTek21 and Retro Rabbit. SmarTek21 is an AI-powered product engineering company and Retro Rabbit is a product design firm specializing in banking and insurance. The merger will integrate SmartTek21’s data analytics, regulatory information management, and digital health capabilities with Retro Rabbit’s expertise in cloud and enterprise application development. Read more here.
Climb Comment: Fascinating combo here with SmarTek21 focusing on AI-native product engineering and Retro Rabbit focusing more on the UX/Design side of the equation, with a strong team based in South Africa. The combined firm will have more than 600 associates globally and a new board was installed comprised of senior leaders from T-Mobile, Jeffries, Blackstone, & JP Morgan as well as SmarTek21 & Tortuga Growth Partners. This appears to be the first deal announced by Tortuga - but we expect to see many more. Kudos to all.
Article of the week
Big news this week is the rise of AI agents, with OpenAI announcing the beta launch of Operator - which can do things like navigate websites to book airline travel or dinner reservations or order groceries. The system still has a ways to go before being a true hands-off robot assistant, but really incredible just how fast AI tech is progressing.
Thanks for following along & hope you found something useful or interesting. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you’re considering a sale this year - we’re always glad to chat & share perspective.
All the best,
Nick