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- Climb's M&A Weekly: Deals by Cleartelligence, TA Associates and Francisco Partners
Climb's M&A Weekly: Deals by Cleartelligence, TA Associates and Francisco Partners
Francisco Partners joins TA Associates as co-controlling shareholder of vertical ERP software company Orisha & Pathfactory acquires Uberflip
Nick @ Climb
July 21, 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.
Align Capital Partners backed Cleartelligence acquires Bardess Group
Overview: This strategic deal sees Cleartelligence acquire fellow data and analytics firm Bardess Group. Based in New Jersey, Bardess primarily serves enterprise customers across industries such as technology, financial services, healthcare and life sciences, leveraging AI technologies to help find end-to-end digital improvement. Their addition supplements Cleartelligence’s current solutions and helps them cement their presence as a leading independent data strategy advisory firm. Read more here.
Climb Comment: This deal marks Cleartelligence’s first add-on acquisition since ACP invested in 2022 - highlighting the facts that often the roadmap post-PE investment involves operational changes prior to looking to M&A, that great deals take time to source & close, and that the market has been tricky past few years. Seems like a great first deal with Bardess bringing blue-chip clients and a skilled team of 50+ data scientists, analysts & strategists.
TA Associates and Francisco Partners sign agreement to become co-controlling shareholders of Orisha
Overview: TA Associates has backed vertical software company Orisha since 2021, and this announcement sees Francisco Partners join them as a majority shareholder. The Paris headquartered company provides industry specific ERP software to companies across 5 sectors, retail, real estate, healthcare, construction and agri-food, and is projected to exceed €250M (~$273M) in revenue for 2024. Read more here.
Climb Comment: Standout deal here with two of the software PE greats partnering on a company which has grown revenue 4x (!!) since TA’s initial investment in 2021. Via a combo of verticalization & localization Orisha has been able to win substantial market share against SAP/Oracle in France & 50+ countries.
"We are big believers in the power of vertical software and hence fully aligned with Orisha’s mission and vision to build industry-specific solutions. Having tracked the company closely for years, we have been impressed by all that the Orisha team has accomplished, under the leadership of Jacques. Working in partnership with him and TA, we will seek to support Orisha’s next stage of growth by continuing to serve its loyal customer base and expanding thoughtfully into new segments," said Quentin Lathuille, Principal, and Petri Oksanen, Partner and Co-Head of European Investing, at Francisco Partners.
Strategic banking software deal sees Kinective acquire Nexus Software
Overview: Kinective provides connectivity, document workflow and branch automation software to the banking industry. This deal sees them add both tech and customers with Nexus supplying over 1,100 financial institutions with solutions that connect branch hardware to core processing systems. Their clients include several global banking leaders and with over 400,000 branches in more than 100 countries using Nexus’ software, Kinective will be able to scale their own banking operations platform internationally by making this move. Read more here.
Climb Comment: Major play in the messaging around this deal seems to be the global expansion angle, with Kinective plugging into a worldwide partner network and customers around the globe with this acquisition. Often the case that making the leap from a domestic to a global player is most efficient via the right acquisition. From a product perspective Nexus handles device management within bank branches - a key functionality which will certainly be a value add to existing Kinective clients.
Warburg Pincus makes strategic growth investment in Varicent
Overview: Leading global growth investor Warburg Pincus has led a strategic growth investment in Varicent with existing investors Great Hill Partners and Spectrum Equity also taking part. Based in Toronto, Varicent has made a name as a leader in sales performance management software. This capital influx aims to advance their current cloud-based platform for optimizing sales performance and grow Varicent’s position in leading markets globally. Read more here.
Climb Comment: Sales teams & revenue orgs have faced a steep road in the last few years, with layoffs standard across tech & many industries and quotas hard to achieve versus tightening corporate budgets. Even as orgs are hesitant to spend on new tools & platforms, solutions that truly drive new revenue still pass the budget hurdle and in the case of Varicent a 2024 Boston Consulting Group study showed revenue increases of 4-10% for Varicent customers. The platform solves challenges such as allocating rep territories & quota, aligning incentives, monitoring perfomance & more in an integrated & data secure environment. This new investment will boost AI capabilities & add go to market funding.
Uberflip bought by Vertu Capital backed PathFactory
Overview: Uberflip and their content marketing platform have been acquired by PathFactory. The acquirer provides a content intelligence and personalization platform which aims to help B2B marketers produce content to target the right individuals at the right time, helping sales teams hit revenue targets. Amidst continued demand for more personalised and frictionless buyer experiences, PathFactory is aiming to use this deal to create a global leader in B2B content intelligence and personalization. Read more here.
Climb Comment: Strong strategic fit here between two leaders in enterprise content marketing. From a product standpoint the two companies are more similar than different, with each offering ‘personalized at scale’ content in the form of blog posts, slide decks, etc to enterprise sales teams looking to close deals. Interesting to note that this transaction was ‘stock-for-stock’ & with both companies having ~100 employees (Pathfactory @ 121 & Uberflip @ 95 per LinkedIn) — expect to see more merger style deals in coming months as management teams & investors look to create value/multiple arbitrage without cash outlay.
Presentation of the week
Insight Partners released their excellent State of Enterprise Tech Report (link) this week. Based on interviews with 400+ senior executives in the sector it offers in-depth analysis on four sectors - Data & AI, Infrastructure & Dev Ecosystem, Digital Experience, & Cybersecurity. Have a look!
Thanks for following along & hope you found something useful or interesting.
All the best,
Nick