Contact: Brenon Daly
Throughout its long and winding 20-year history, the name may have changed for Numara Software, but the business is still the same. The IT service desk management vendor was originally known as Blue Ocean Software, a name that got erased during the three years the company was owned by Intuit. After TA Associates sponsored a carve-out of the business in October 2005, the newly independent company came up with the name of Numara, a play on its former moniker that means ‘new ocean’ in Latin.
Regardless of what the Tampa, Florida-based company has been called, it has consistently thrown off a ton of cash. According to our understanding, privately held Numara runs north of $100m in sales and north of 35% EBITDA margins. Just recently, the company began to put some of that cash to work in M&A.
After two years out of the market, Numara recently reached across the Atlantic to pick up an Estonian mobile device management (MDM) startup called Fromdistance. (The deal was a tiny one, lining up very closely with the terms for a similar purchase by Research in Motion earlier this year. We estimate that RIM paid about $6m for German MDM startup ubitexx, which was generating less than $1m in sales.) And Numara may not be done shopping. We understand that the company is currently looking at a handful of other possible acquisitions and could well shore up a deal in the next few months.