Contact: Brenon Daly
The new CEO at Acronis has brought a new M&A strategy to the backup and disaster recovery (DR) vendor. Although the company has plenty of cash – thanks to its mid-30% EBITDA margin – it hasn’t used that to go shopping in the past. And when Acronis has looked at deals, we understand that it has historically been more focused on consolidation or geographic expansion.
That has changed dramatically under CEO Alex Pinchev, who took the top spot at Acronis in January. According to our understanding, Pinchev drove the acquisition of GroupLogic, a company that wasn’t on the M&A list under Acronis’ previous regime. A source says that although Acronis arrived late in the process, it moved quickly to land GroupLogic.
The acquisition gets 10-year-old Acronis solidly into the fast-growing enterprise file-sharing and synchronization market. Acronis eventually plans to integrate GroupLogic’s product into its flagship DR and backup offering.
Granted, the deal won’t have much impact on Acronis’ financials right now. GroupLogic – like rival Syncplicity, which sold to EMC almost four months ago – was probably only generating $2-3m of share/synch revenue. That’s nothing to Acronis, which will sell about $150m of backup and DR this year. But the move does show a change in strategy at Acronis.
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