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- Climb's M&A Weekly: Capgemini, Iron Creek Partners and Main Street Capital all feature
Climb's M&A Weekly: Capgemini, Iron Creek Partners and Main Street Capital all feature
Capgemini targets data management for SAP transactions, and Iron Creek Partners and Main Street Capital partner to buy a fintech
Nick @ Climb
September 01, 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 $100m+ 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.
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Capgemini acquires Syniti from tech investment firm Bridge Growth Capital
Overview: French giant Capgemini is acquiring Syniti from Bridge Growth Capital, who acquired the company back in 2017. Since then Syniti has grown to provide data quality management, migration and governance services for clients across sectors such as life sciences, aerospace & defense, manufacturing, consumer products & retail and automotive. Read more here.
Climb Comment: Syniti has a strong presence in the SAP ecosystem & will aid Capgemini in managing data migrations & large-scale governance projects for clients. In H1 ‘24 ‘Strategy & Transformation Services’ made up 9% of €11.1B in revenue - Syniti’s 1200+ professionals will surely make an impact in this arm of the business, as well as add customer base in North America.
MoneyThumb bought by an investment group led by Iron Creek Partners
Overview: MoneyThumb, a provider of automated document evaluation and fraud detection solutions has been bought by PE firm Iron Creek Partners, with Main Street Capital (NYSE: MAIN) also investing. The San-Diego based fintech’s underwriting automation software helps clients convert and analyze financial PDF in seconds, with the AI file tampering tool detecting any fraudulent activity. Read more here.
Climb Comment: Great acquisition here for Iron Creek - banking software is an area of interest for PE buyers based on digitization trends in the industry, regulatory tailwinds, and a defined customer base. MoneyThumb solves the challenging problem of converting PDF based financial statements into workable formats for banks to underwrite while also running advanced fraud detection. Altered bank statements are one of the most common forms of retail level fraud and MoneyThumb protects banks & credit unions while speeding workflows. Kudos to all.
Hospitality tech deal sees Agilysys add Serent Capital backed Book4Time
Overview: Hospitality software company Agilysys has announced a deal for Book4Time, provider of a cloud-based platform designed to streamline spa operations for hotels and resorts. The Ontario based company’ solutions help manage appointments, staff, inventory, corporate reporting and overall guest experience, with an investment from PE firm Serent Capital in 2020 helping them grow to serve customers in over 100 countries. Read more here.
Climb Comment: Agilysis is a longtime leader in the hospitality space, having been founded in 1963 and currently trading at a $3.1B market cap, appx 13x sales. The stock has done well over that period & also recently, up 60% over the last year, with revenue & ebitda growth as well. Certainly a good home for Book4Time & another example of the platform approach in hospitality — Agilysis announced Marriott’s adoption of their POS system, no doubt that there will be add-on sales opportunities for a spa booking platform.
Dysrupt makes Armscye their second acquisition in 3 weeks
Overview: Following from their deal for Half Past Nine which appeared in our newsletter 3 weeks ago, paid media agency Dysrupt has now acquired Armscye. This addition further reinforces Dysrupt’s position across both the consumer and B2B marketing sectors, a theme of their previous deal, with Armscye offering performance marketing and brand strategy services to clients in retail/e-commerce and other early stage tech sectors. Read more here.
Climb Comment: Another sector focused deal here by Dysrupt. They are building out leadership in paid marketing across every vertical and Armscye provides the expertise in retail / e-commerce - a key area due to heavy ad spends. It will be interesting to observe where they move next whether they will look for another vertical specialist or potentially go into another service, e.g., SEO.
If you are looking to buy or sell in the agency space, we are experts here and have already advised on a couple of deals this year here with more in the pipeline. Reply to this email to set up a chat.
San Francisco based Swiftly acquires Hopthru
Overview: Swiftly provides transit agencies with a data platform to share real-time passenger information, manage day-to-day operations and improve service performance. Similarly, Hopthru provides these agencies with software for tracking and analyzing ridership data. By integrating their technology into Swiftly’s platform, the acquirer will now be able to offer their clients, which include several of America’s largest transit agencies, powerful ways to access, clean, monitor and analyze ridership data for reporting, service planning and scheduling purposes. Read more here.
Climb Comment: Another deal that is at its core a data play, with Hopthru providing hardware-agnostic ridership analytics solutions to public transport agencies & Swiftly taking a more full-stack approach which includes rider communications & operations management. Adding Hopthru’s deep data analytics capabilities strengthens the Swiftly platform and also adds reporting capabilities.
Podcast of the week
Another classic episode this week of Invest like the Best with investor Gavin Baker discusses latest trends in tech, particularly, around AI and semiconductors. For context, Gavin started covering Nvidia back in early 2000s so his insights are are well worth a listen.
Thanks for following along & hope you found something useful or interesting.
All the best,
Nick