Category: VC

Citrix consolidates collaboration

Ben Kolada

Contact: Ben Kolada, Thejeswi Venkatesh

In its third collaboration deal in the past 18 months, Citrix Systems said Wednesday that it will acquire small Copenhagen-based startup Podio. The target provides team collaboration SaaS for SMBs, apparently mostly through a ‘freemium’ model. Its product is used for project management, social information sharing, sales lead management and employee recruitment management. It also provides related Apple iPhone and Google Android applications. But Citrix isn’t the only company consolidating in the collaboration market – its Podio buy comes at a time of record interest in this sector.

While there are many collaboration vendors in the market, Podio has a different approach – it enables users to create their own applications to carry out specific tasks. This allows teams to tweak the platform to cater to their specific needs. Citrix will integrate Podio into its GoTo cloud services suite, making it easy for existing customers to adopt the platform. Podio already integrates with Dropbox, Google Docs and Box.

Citrix isn’t disclosing terms of the acquisition, but we suspect that the three-year-old firm probably generated less than $5m in revenue. Podio claims tens of thousands of customers in 170 different countries, but the majority of them are likely only using its free product. If our revenue assumption is correct, then this deal should be considered more of ‘tech and talent’ play than anything else. Citrix traditionally pays above-average valuations, but we doubt that it paid more for Podio than the $54.2m it forked over in its last collaboration acquisition – ShareFile. The 27-employee firm had raised a total of $4.6m from Sunstone Capital, CEO Tommy Ahlers and private investors Thomas Madsen-Mygdal and Ulrik Jensen.

Beyond Citrix’s recent consolidation, the collaboration market is seeing increasing interest overall. The 451 M&A KnowledgeBase shows 79 collaboration acquisitions in 2011 – nearly double the volume in 2010 and an all-time record. Throughout the collaboration sector, some of the most notable transactions since the beginning of 2011 include Yammer buying oneDrum (announced just today), salesforce.com reaching for Manymoon and Dimdim, Citrix competitor VMware acquiring Socialcast and SlideRocket, and Jive Software picking up OffiSync (click on the links for disclosed and estimated valuations). Jive itself made its own splash in social collaboration when it went public in December. The company hit the Nasdaq at $850m and has since seen its market cap balloon to nearly $1.6bn, or 14 times projected 2012 revenue.

Citrix’s collaboration acquisitions

Date announced Target Collaboration sector Deal value
April 11, 2012 Podio Team collaboration Not disclosed
October 13, 2011 Novel Labs (aka ShareFile) File sharing & team collaboration $54.2m
December 17, 2010 Netviewer AG Web conferencing $115m

Source: 451 Research M&A KnowledgeBase; Click on the links for disclosed and estimated valuations

For more real-time information on tech M&A, follow us on Twitter @MAKnowledgebase.

Palo Alto puts in its paperwork

Brenon Daly

Contact: Brenon Daly, Thejeswi Venkatesh

Long rumored to be an IPO candidate, Palo Alto Networks has finally filed its paperwork for a $175m offering. The application-level firewall security vendor has put up astonishing growth in recent quarters, but unlike other early-stage companies, Palo Alto has been running in the black recently. But the real story – and one that will certainly draw interest on Wall Street – is Palo Alto’s astonishing growth. From essentially a standing start in 2007, the company has racked up more than 6,650 customers.

On the top line, Palo Alto has grown tenfold since 2009, recording sales of $185m over the past four quarters. In its most recent quarter, which ended January 31, the company more than doubled sales to $57m. While Palo Alto is obviously just getting started, it’s nonetheless worth considering how the startup is growing relative to the firewall industry’s stalwart, Check Point Software. That vendor, which crossed over the $1bn mark in 2010, expanded revenue about 13% last year.

Off a revenue base that’s counted in the billions of dollars, Check Point’s growth rate is actually fairly impressive. To put that another way, Check Point generated an additional $149m in revenue in 2011, which is less than Palo Alto generated but a level that’s still respectable. (And we should note that Check Point increases sales at a level of profitability that most other tech companies can only envy: For every dollar it books as sales, more than 40 cents of that drops straight to the bottom line.)

Wall Street certainly is bullish on Check Point, having driven the company’s shares to their highest level in 11 years. It currently garners a market cap of $12.8bn, a full 10 times trailing sales. We would expect Palo Alto to at least trade at that multiple when it comes to market later this summer. That could put its valuation above $2bn. Not a bad bit of value creation for a company that raised just $65m in venture backing. Greylock Partners and Sequoia Partners are Palo Alto’s biggest shareholders, with each firm owning 22% of the startup.

Dell picks up the pace

Brenon Daly

Contact: Brenon Daly

As a relative latecomer to the M&A market, Dell is making up for lost time. The company on Thursday announced its third acquisition of the week, reaching for Vancouver-based Make Technologies. Both Make and Clerity Solutions, which Dell picked up on Tuesday, produce migration software and will be slotted into the services division. Dell’s other purchase of the week was thin-client technology vendor Wyse Technology.

The recent frenetic M&A activity by the Austin, Texas-based company represents a dramatic reversal from its historic practice. For the first 30 years of its life, Dell rarely acquired anything. It only really started its M&A program in mid-2007 – a point by which many rivals already had consolidated broad patches of the tech landscape. While Dell sat out of the market, IBM, for instance, had already purchased more than 60 companies, buying its way into storage, document management, security and other areas. In the same period, Oracle gobbled up some 40 companies.

But it’s a different story so far this year. With five deals notched already in 2012, Dell has more transactions than IBM and Oracle combined. The contrast is even sharper with Dell’s nemesis Hewlett-Packard, which has yet to print a deal in 2012. In fact, just looking at the acquisitions that Dell has inked recently, many of them appear designed to bolster offerings where Dell goes up against its reeling rival, such as networking, security and storage.

Dell deals

Year Number of transactions
2012, YTD 5
2011 3
2010 7
2009 4
2008 1
2007 6
2006 2
2005 0

Source: The 451 M&A KnowledgeBase

For more real-time information on tech M&A, follow us on Twitter @MAKnowledgebase.

HomeAway finds its way back into the market

Brenon Daly

Contact: Brenon Daly

As a private company, HomeAway was a steady buyer. Founded in 2005, the vacation rental website had notched 11 transactions through last year. When it went public last June, the company raised $216m. With the new cash – not to mention shares that, at least initially, were richly valued – HomeAway had plenty of resources to continue its shopping. But that’s not the way it played out for the consolidator.

The company only stepped back into the M&A market earlier this week, reaching for Top Rural, a Madrid-based site that offers vacation rentals in small towns and the countryside in Europe. (The purchase comes roughly 11 months since HomeAway’s previous acquisition, the second-longest M&A dry spell at the company.) What’s more, it’s a rather small step back into the market. HomeAway, which held some $184m in cash and short-term investments at the end of December, is handing over just $19m for Top Rural.

With Top Rural, HomeAway returns to an acquisition strategy it has frequently used: geographic expansion. The Austin, Texas-based company has reached for similar rental sites in Australia, Brazil, France and the UK. (Currently, HomeAway has listings in some 168 countries.) In its other international shopping trips, HomeAway has paid between $2m and $45m for the sites.

A popping tech IPO market

Brenon Daly

Contact: Brenon Daly

If the overwhelmingly bullish equity market didn’t do much for M&A in the first months of 2012, it certainly gave a big boost to the companies looking to go public. Investors have handed out double-digit valuations to a number of IPO candidates so far this year, pushing several new offerings above the magical threshold of $1bn in market capitalization. That has sparked a rethink about exits by startups and their backers, who had been banking almost exclusively during the recession on selling their companies. (Overall, as we recently noted, spending on tech M&A in Q1 dropped to its lowest quarterly level in two years.)

A quick look at the list of Q1 offerings arguably shows a healthier period for tech IPOs than at any point in the past decade: Guidewire Software, which went public in January, has doubled since its debut and currently trades at a $1.5bn market value. ExactTarget has created even more market value since its March offering, which gave the company the largest capitalization of any SaaS company on its debut. Millennial Media nearly doubled during its March debut, valuing the mobile ad platform vendor at nearly $2bn. In late February, Bazaarvoice went public above its expected range and has risen steadily since then. The social commerce firm commands a valuation of $1.1bn, roughly 10 times the sales it recorded in 2011. Demandware trades at an even steeper multiple: Its $800m market cap works out to an eye-popping 14 times last year’s sales.

And, if anything, the current quarter should build on the momentum established by the IPO market at the start of the year. All investor eyes are looking ahead to the seminal offering from Facebook, which is reportedly set to take place next month. The social networking site, which filed its prospectus on February 1, is likely to start its life as a public company valued at about $100bn. That’s an astounding valuation for a company that earned $1bn on sales of $3.7bn in 2011.

While Facebook is pretty much a once-in-a-generation IPO, the buzz it generates will undoubtedly spread beyond the specific offering and even the consumer Internet sector. That will likely help entice more IPO candidates to put in their paperwork, as well as boost the fortunes of those that do make it to market.

For more real-time information on tech M&A, follow us on Twitter @MAKnowledgebase.

M&A spending slump to start 2012

Brenon Daly

Contact: Brenon Daly

With Q1 set to wrap on Friday, M&A spending is on track for its lowest quarterly level in two years. The aggregate value of all tech transactions announced around the globe in the first three months of 2012 slipped to just $31bn, lower than both the previous quarter (Q4 2011) and the same quarter last year (Q1 2011).

The declining M&A activity comes as the overall economic environment has improved dramatically from 2011. For instance, there haven’t been emergency bailouts or historic downgrades of sovereign debt so far this year. Even Europe, which was the epicenter for much of the recent economic woes, is back growing again after actually contracting in the fourth quarter.

Reflecting that renewed optimism, the Nasdaq index has poked above 3,000 for first time since late 2000. During the quarter, the index recorded an almost uninterrupted ascent, gaining an astounding 19% since the start of the year. On top of the ever-increasing share price, most tech companies are continuing to stuff cash into their treasuries at a record rate.

So there are plenty of resources – in the form of both market confidence and acquisition currency – to do transactions. And yet few companies are shopping, at least not for significant purchases. In Q1, we recorded just eight transactions valued at $1bn or more – compared with an average of 12 big-ticket deals announced in each quarter last year.

Recent quarterly deal flow

Period Deal volume Deal value
Q1 2012 882 $31bn
Q4 2011 874 $38bn
Q3 2011 955 $63bn
Q2 2011 952 $71bn
Q1 2011 914 $47bn

Source: The 451 M&A KnowledgeBase

For more real-time information on tech M&A, follow us on Twitter @MAKnowledgebase.

A milestone for The 451 M&A KnowledgeBase

Contact: Brenon Daly, Tim Miller

After a decade of charting the ups and downs of the tech M&A market, The 451 M&A KnowledgeBase hit a significant milestone earlier this week: we entered our 30,000 transaction in what has become the go-to database for the tech dealmaking community. When we started building our comprehensive database on January 1, 2002, the tech industry was still struggling to recover from a meltdown that it had largely brought on itself.

With the drastic ‘revaluation’ that swept through the tech landscape after the Internet bubble burst, it hardly seemed possible in the early 2000s that we were about to chronicle a decade that would see a staggering $2.5 trillion in collective M&A spending. (To put that mind-boggling figure into perspective, consider that the aggregate value of tech deals equals the annual GDP for all of France.)

What’s more, the pace of dealmaking is accelerating. It took us basically four and a half years to record the first 10,000 transactions in The 451 M&A KnowledgeBase. But we’ve blazed through each of the two subsequent 10,000-deal blocks in just less than three years. For another indication of just how sharp the acceleration has been, consider this: while the tech M&A spending levels of 2004 and 2011 matched each other almost exactly at $225bn, last year saw nearly twice as many transactions (3,730) compared with 2004 (2,080).

Milestones in tech M&A

Number of transactions Period Period duration
1-10,000 January 2002-May 2006 53 months
10,000-20,000 May 2006-April 2009 35 months
20,000-30,000 April 2009-March 2012 35 months

Source: The 451 M&A KnowledgeBase

There are a number of reasons for the dramatic – and dizzying – pickup in the pace of tech M&A. Obviously, the industry is more mature, which brings increased pressure to find new growth markets that companies can buy their way into. (Cash levels at most of these buyers, meanwhile, have never been higher, with tens of billions of dollars sloshing around in many corporate treasuries.) That has meant acquisitions that have not only taken companies into markets that have historically been off-limits (think of Dell going on a two-year shopping spree in storage rather than continue to partner with outside vendors), but also led them into markets that are only emerging (think of Google, essentially a media company, getting into the mobile hardware game by buying Motorola Mobility).

Undoubtedly, those trends will continue to drive M&A at a rapid rate. (Already this year, we’re moving along at the same record-level clip that we registered in the same timeframe last year in terms of deal volume.) To help you make sense of the deal flow – and ultimately make better deals, whatever side of the transaction you find yourself – we invite you to test drive The 451 M&A KnowledgeBase. We’re confident that you’ll find the insight, in-depth categorization and propriety estimates for deal terms in the database an indispensible M&A tool. Just click here for a free, no-obligation trial of The 451 M&A KnowledgeBase.

Survey: Business looking up for startups

Brenon Daly

Contact: Brenon Daly

Even though M&A activity so far this year has remained rather muted, startups are still seeing a trade sale as the likely exit for their business. In a survey that Montgomery & Co released at its ninth annual technology conference last week, a full three-quarters (73%) of the startups indicated that a sale of their business was the ‘most likely exit path.’ That was more than 10 times the percentage of respondents (7%) who said an IPO was the ‘most likely’ outcome.

The responses, which came from a selection of the 180 companies that presented during the two-day Montgomery conference, also indicated that business is picking up. Six out of 10 (61%) predicted a significant improvement in business in the first half of this year compared with the back half of 2011. A further 25% projected moderate improvement. When it came to putting a number on that, nearly half (48%) the respondents said they expected sales to at least double in 2012.

However, whether that bullishness comes through in the prices these startups ultimately fetch in trade sales is less certain. In our survey last December of corporate developer executives – the main buyers of these startups – nearly four out of 10 (39%) indicated that they expected the M&A valuation of startups to decline in 2012. That level was actually slightly higher than the percentage who forecasted an increase – the first time that has happened in three years.

These differing views between the buyers and sellers in the tech market are creating a valuation gap, which goes some distance toward explaining why M&A spending so far this year is running only slightly more than half the level it was at the same time last year. In all five years of our survey, corporate development executives have highlighted the ‘bid/ask spread’ as the single biggest M&A pain point for them.

A harsh focus on Vocus

Brenon Daly

Contact:  Brenon Daly

Investors erased more than one-third of the market value of Vocus on Wednesday after the on-demand PR management software provider announced the largest deal in its history. Vocus said Tuesday evening that it will hand over $179m in cash and stock for iContact, a transaction that will add email capabilities to Vocus’ marketing suite. The purchase of iContact, which effectively cleans out the treasury at Vocus, is more than three times larger than all of the company’s previous acquisitions combined.

One way to look at the deal: Vocus effectively paid twice for the transaction. In addition to the $179m in consideration it will hand over to iContact’s backers, Vocus also gave up another $170m on the Nasdaq. The stock, which has ranged from the low teens to the low 30s over the past year, changed hands at about $14 on Wednesday.

Shakeout looming in MDM sector?

Ben Kolada

Contact: Ben Kolada

The crowded mobile device management (MDM) sector is likely to see a shakeout in the near future. By one account, there are already more than 80 firms vying for space in the growing MDM market. As the sector’s more notable vendors increasingly advance ahead of the competition, we expect laggard firms will either shutter their doors or be picked off one by one in small bolt-on technology acquisitions. But as the sector narrows, the future may shine brighter for firms that are making names for themselves.

As the smartphone and tablet take more overall computing share from laptops and desktops, the need for MDM will accelerate. Increasing adoption of tablets, in particular, is driving MDM demand. According to a report by ChangeWave Research, the survey arm of 451 Research, 23% of respondents said they plan on purchasing tablets for their employees in the first quarter of 2012, up from just 5% in the fourth quarter of 2010.

As the largest acquirers continue to consolidate the software stack, we expect to see them move into the MDM market. IBM has already announced a couple such acquisitions, picking up BigFix in July 2010 for an estimated $400m and Worklight in January for an estimated $70m. Dell and BMC are also expected to be eyeing this market, and would likely look at the frontrunners – firms like AirWatch, BoxTone, Good Technology, MobileIron and Zenprise, to name a few – as their top acquisition choices. But these firms aren’t likely to be had for cheap. We’ve already heard rumors that one of them is looking for a $400m-plus exit, and that another was previously in the sights of a $250m deal. Meanwhile, valuations will likely rise as these vendors continue growing. In 2011, Zenprise tripled its headcount, while MobileIron doubled its employee base. AirWatch’s headcount hit 400 last year, and it expects to double that this year.