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- Climb's M&A Weekly: IBM, TELEO, and Rhombus all feature
Climb's M&A Weekly: IBM, TELEO, and Rhombus all feature
IBM acquires Hashicorp and TELEO acquires Softrax
Nick @ Climb
March 02, 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.
Oliva Capital announces management buyout of VolP.ms
Overview: Oliva Capital, with Fondaction, has bought out VoIP.ms, a field of voice telecommunications company. VoIP.ms uses cloud-based infrastructure to offer internet-based communications to thousands of clients. It can be integrated with Microsoft teams and provides a very consistent communication experience. Read more here.
Climb Comment: Congrats to all involved here - Oliva is a Quebec based firm with diversified holdings ranging from software development companies & platforms to industrial equipment, ornamental plant nurseries, & a premium Japanese beer business. On the Voip side we see continued strength in that market as businesses shift more communications to the cloud. Fondaction CSN, who also participated in the deal, is the financial arm of the second-largest Quebecois workers union, with more than $3B under management.
TELEO Capital acquires Softrax
Overview: TELEO Capital Management has acquired Softrax, a revenue management software company. Softrax was previously owned by TELUS, and this partnership with TELEO allows Softrax to expand and increase its operational efficiency. TELEO plans to help Softrax grow both organically and strategically while making Softrax’s services smarter with AI. Read more here.
Climb Comment: Softrax provides integrated rev rec management to stringent ASC 606 and IFRS 15 standards - complex rulings around how and when a company can recognize booked sales and of particular concern to saas companies who often bill in advance for services. Softrax sits as a middle layer between incoming orders (CRM, CPQ) & ERP/Accounting platforms. In this middle layer Softrax offers a variety of billing & workflow tools. TELEO will look to invest in product development and further integration of AI into the stack.
IBM acquires comprehensive cloud platform
Overview: IBM has announced it has acquired Hashicorp, a company whose products automate hybrid cloud applications and generative AI. Hashicorp is best known for Terraform, an infrastructure-as-a-code tool. IBM paid $6.4 billion for the company. With IBM’s resources, it will try to implement Hashicorp’s technology into every data center. Read more here.
Climb Comment: This is the third major strategic expansion by IBM in recent years, having bought Red Hat in 2018 and Apptio in 2023. IBM paid $35 per share of common stock for Hashicorp. Hashicorp reported an adjusted EBITDA loss of $38.2 million. Some analysts predict Hashicorp will generate $646 million in revenue post-acquisition driven by IBM’s global go-to-market motion — giving us a ‘hand-wavy’ forward valuation of around 10x revenue. At the core this is an infrastructure & cybersecurity play- dovetails nicely with IBM’s existing offerings via Red Hat and others.
Rhombus acquires Dashdive
Overview: Rhombus, backed by numerous PE groups, acquires Dashdive, a SaaS platform that monitors multi-tenant cloud service costs. Rhombus will now be able to offer more cost-effective solutions to its customer base. Before Rhombus acquired Dashdive, it used Dashdive’s tools to provide cloud-based security systems. Read more here.
Climb Comment: Rhombus has raised a total of $90m with a recent $45m Series C in July. Dashdive had been integrated into the Rhombus platform for some time to assist with predicting and monitoring cloud costs for clients. Rhombus provides ‘cloud-based physical security’ — AI-assisted monitoring of security cameras, access control, & more. Clearly, sending tremendous amounts of HD video data to the cloud can get costly fast & bringing a solution like Dashdive in-house makes a ton of sense. Dashdive was part of YC Winter ‘23 and as of today showed 1 employee on LinkedIn - likely a case of changing titles post-acquisition but definitely suggestive of a lean business.
GI Partners and TA Associates make majority investment in Egnyte
Overview: Egnyte, a provider of content collaboration and governance solutions, has received a growth investment from GI partners and TA Associates. Egynte’s solutions integrate AI, storage, and data security for more than 20,000 enterprise customers. Egnyte will use this new capital to expand its global market share and utilize its two new partners' vast amount of resources. Read more here.
Climb Comment: Another big data/infrastructure/security play. Agnostic of vertical/end market it’s undeniable that Cloud is growing at tremendous rates year over year with no signs of slowdown. The infrastructure angle makes sense as a ‘picks & rails’ move. Egnyte raised a $75 million in Series E funding in 2018, led by Goldman Sachs. Will be interesting to see if GI & TA look to IPO the business in short-mid term - either way a positive indicator for later-stage private market buyouts.
Article of the week
Short one this week - Thoma Bravo targets European software bargains with new fund. Thoma Bravo opened a London office in 2023 and recently closed on an almost $2B fund focused on European deals - citing a less crowded market and better value. We’ve been seeing this trend for several years now with vertical market aggregators ($CSU, Valsoft, etc)— interesting to see blue-chip PE echoing the sentiment.
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