- Climb Advisor's M&A Weekly
- Posts
- Climb's M&A Weekly: Thoma Bravo, Solarwinds, and Volaris all feature
Climb's M&A Weekly: Thoma Bravo, Solarwinds, and Volaris all feature
Thoma Bravo sells Quorum Software and Solarwinds purchases Squadcast
Nick @ Climb
March 09, 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.
Solarwinds acquires Squadcast, an incident response solution company
Overview: Solarwinds, a provider of IT software, buys Squadcast and unifies incident response workflows under one roof. Users of Squadcast have reported saving 1,000 work hours and $500,000 in costs with the company’s solutions. Solarwinds plans on using AI to enhance Squadcast’s incident response packages to reduce noise and solve incidents faster. Read more here.
Climb Comment: Solarwinds recently entered into a deal to be acquired by Turn/River Capital at an EV of $4.4 billion. This sale represented ~35% premium to the company’s weighted average closing price of the previous 3 months and was approved by former majority shareholders Thoma Bravo and Silver Lake. Solarwinds is quickly putting this new capital to work with its acquisition of Squadcast - an IT alert/incident response solution. Makes sense as they continue movement towards comprehensive IT management.
Volaris Group purchases Oceans HQ, a SaaS solutions provider for international ship registries
Overview: Oceans HQ will join PDMS, a company already under the Volaris umbrella, that provides digital solutions and services, including with shipping clients. Oceans HQ has been serving the maritime industry for over a decade and its software is designed to support the day-to-day operations of maritime registries. Read more here.
Climb Comment: Volaris, a subsidiary of Constellation Software, makes further moves into maritime software with this acquisition. Oceans HQ offers 'flag state’ vessel registry solutions. Given shipping is a global business many shipowners choose to register vessels under so-called ‘flags of convenience’ - in short there are regulatory and operational benefits to registering a ship in a country like Liberia vs the United States. Oceans HQ helps manage the administrative backend of compliance with international standards, including labor documentation and incident reporting.
Francisco Partners buys energy software company from Thoma Bravo
Overview: Francisco Partners has bought Quorum Software, a portfolio company of Thoma Bravo. Quorum is a software provider for the energy industry designed to optimize workflows and decision making. With the help of Thoma Bravo over the past few years, Quorum now serves over 1,500 customers across 50 countries. Read more here.
Climb Comment: Francisco Partners has made a series of large acquisitions over the past few years, this one being for $2.4 billion. Its target for its most recent fund was $10 billion and the fund closed having raised $13.5 billion. Quorum offers a wide range of solutions to the O&G industry, to include well forecasting & analytics, pipeline management, and hydrocarbon measuring and testing. Always interesting to speculate about the behind the scenes dynamics of deals between PE majors - with Thoma Bravo having $170B+ in AUM and Francisco Partners ~$42B. Thoma Bravo grew the business “exponentially” per the press release, and Francisco will look to continue investing in platform development & strategic M&A.
Charlesbank Capital Partners takes EMCORE private
Overview: Charlesbank Capital Partners has taken EMCORE private through its holding company, Velocity One. Velocity One brings EMCORE into a portfolio that consists of Cartridge Actuated Devices and Aerosphere Power. The goal for Velocity One is to pair these three companies together to build an aerospace and defense platform. Read more here.
Climb Comment: Charlesbank Capital has been pursuing the aerospace sector for numerous years and the creation of Velocity One and its subsequent acquisitions is exciting. Velocity One is an aerospace manufacturing holding company that has been established with the take-private of EMCORE. Velocity One looks to continue to acquire aerospace and defense companies with the backing of Charlesbank.
Rubicon makes majority investment into CollegeNET
Overview: Rubicon Technology Partners has made a majority investment in CollegeNET, a company that provides software solutions for higher education. CollegeNET makes administrative operations at institutions more efficient. Some of its solutions include AI-driven scheduling, admissions, and next generation virtual classrooms. Read more here.
Climb Comment: CollegeNET was founded in 1977 and is a vanguard in higher education technology, with solutions for scheduling, admissions, & virtual learning tools. CollegeNET most recently announced funding from Peak Rock Capital in 2023. Founder, Jim Wolfston, will continue to run the business and be a significant shareholder and will leverage Rubicon’s investment to back even more AI product innovation.
Article of the week
Constellation Software announced 2024 numbers this week. Nine page press release here and full filing here. CSU is the undisputed champ for deep value vertical market software aggregation. Lots to unpack here. In 2024 they deployed ~$1.7B in cash for acquisitions — adding around $1.6B in revenue (inclusive of 2% reported organic growth). Back of the napkin shows they’re still buying around 1x rev in most cases. Sitting on $2B in cash and actively deploying. If you want to go further down the Constellation rabbit hole check out Mark Leonard’s annual letter from 2012 here - fascinating dive into the relationship between organic growth and ROIC.
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