Fiserv acquires Open Solutions and its debt

Contact: Ben Kolada, Tejas Venkatesh

Fiserv has acquired fellow financial software company Open Solutions, adding new clients and bolstering its offerings for credit unions and banks. Fiserv is buying Open Solutions from Carlyle Group and Providence Equity Partners, paying $55m for the target’s equity and assuming $960m in debt. While Open Solutions’ enterprise value (EV) this time around is about 20% less than its price in its 2006 take-private, its equity value is a much smaller fraction of the previous transaction.

In the time since Carlyle Group and Providence Equity took Open Solutions private to Monday’s sale to Fiserv, the company’s debt has ballooned. Open Solutions had roughly $448m in net debt when it announced that it was being taken private. That amounted to about one-third (36%) of its total EV. The company’s debt has nearly doubled in the past six years and now accounts for nearly all (95%) of its EV.

Although Open Solutions’ debt does appear troubling, Fiserv is recognizing some financial benefits from the acquisition. Open Solutions has had a history of losses, which means that tax breaks are available to Fiserv. The net present value of those breaks is $165m, which will ultimately reduce the total cost of the acquisition from $1.01bn to $865m.

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Though relatively small, Thoma Bravo’s Mediware buy signals larger trends

Contact: Ben Kolada

Although Thoma Bravo’s $195m reach for Mediware Information Systems isn’t exactly a market-moving acquisition, tech dealmakers will note that the transaction underscores a pair of larger trends in tech M&A. The deal continues the consolidation in the medical-focused IT vertical, as well as hints at the reemergence of buyout shops as volume acquirers.

Thoma Bravo is handing over $22 in cash for each share of Mediware’s stock, a 40% premium to the day-prior closing price, and the highest price Mediware’s shares have ever seen. The transaction values Mediware’s equity at $195m. However, the medical management software vendor’s $40m in cash holdings, and no debt, reduces its net cost to $155m. Using that enterprise value figure, Mediware is valued at 2.4 times trailing revenue and 8.8x trailing EBITDA.

Mediware’s sale is the latest acquisition in the rapidly consolidating medical-focused IT vertical. In July, Huntsman Gay Global Capital sold Sunquest Information Systems to Roper Industries for $1.4bn, or about 10x projected EBITDA, and One Equity Partners acquired M*Modal for an enterprise value of $1.1bn, or 2.4x trailing sales. We’ve recently noted that medical speech recognition and transcription companies in particular seem to be receiving considerable buyout interest.

While the Mediware acquisition shows the health of medical-focused tech M&A, it also points at somewhat of a reemergence of private equity firms as volume acquirers. Thoma Bravo, including its portfolio companies LANDesk and PLATO Learning, has already announced five acquisitions this year. PE firms were also especially active in August, with Carlyle Group shelling out $3.3bn for Getty Images.

PE activity also comes while some strategics are sitting on the sidelines. For instance, CA Technologies, which has historically announced about four acquisitions per year, has only announced one this year – the purchase of process automation software veteran Paragon Global Technology. The deal, announced this week, is CA’s first disclosed transaction in more than a year. Also, Symantec has been out of the market since March.

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Increasing interest in Internet M&A, as Getty Images sells for $3.3bn

Contact: Ben Kolada

In another sign of growing interest in the digital media sector, and in Internet companies in particular, Getty Images has announced that its management and The Carlyle Group are acquiring the company from Hellman & Friedman for $3.3bn. The consortium is paying nearly 40% more for the company than H&F did just four years ago when it took Getty private in a $2.4bn deal. The deal is the largest Internet content and commerce acquisition since Silver Lake Partners and Warburg Pincus announced in May 2010 that they were taking Interactive Data Corp private for $3.4bn.

With the exception of a dip in 2003, M&A volume in the broad Internet content and commerce category has risen every year since we began tracking tech acquisitions in 2002. Unlike the greater tech sector, Internet deal volume was even resilient during the recent recession. According to The 451 M&A KnowledgeBase, while overall yearly tech M&A volume dropped 25% from its high of 4,032 transactions announced in 2006 to 3,020 in 2008, Internet M&A volume rose 10.5% over the same period.

Both older Internet properties and hot upstarts are attracting interest. The advent of social media has enabled today’s Internet startups to rapidly market their products to millions of consumers through powerful word of mouth marketing. Meanwhile, older Internet vendors that survived the tech industry’s nuclear winter a decade ago have now matured, and many are seeking liquidity.

Also driving M&A activity is the rise of serial Internet acquirers such as Google, which has picked up 31 Internet firms. And we’re seeing a resurgence of Internet consolidation shops, such as Rebellion Media and MITRE.

Internet content and commerce annual deal volume

Year Deal volume % change
2012 YTD 441 N/A
2011 787 26%
2010 625 9%
2009 572 13%
2008 504 4%
2007 485 6%
2006 456 53%
2005 298 62%
2004 184 8%
2003 170 -36%
2002 265 N/A

Source: The 451 M&A KnowledgeBase

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Big deals for single PE firms

Contact: Brenon Daly

In 2010, it was The Carlyle Group. So far in 2011, it’s Providence Equity Partners. These two private equity (PE) firms have the two largest non-club tech leveraged buyouts in each of the past two years. Recall that last October – on successive days, no less – Carlyle erased both CommScope and Syniverse Technologies from the public market in a pair of deals that cost the buyout shop $6.5bn. (Understandably, Carlyle has been fairly quiet since then, announcing only a pair of small transactions.)

Now, Providence has its own double-barrel deals that are on top of the standings. Somewhat unusually, both of the firm’s acquisitions came on the first day of a new quarter: On April 1, it announced the planned take-private of SRA International for $1.9bn, and then followed that up Friday with the $1.6bn buyout of Blackboard to start the third quarter.

PE activity since the Great Recession

Period Deal volume Deal value
Q3-Q4, 2009 62 $12.1bn
Q1-Q2, 2010 57 $10.7bn
Q3-Q4, 2010 76 $15.6bn
Q1-Q2, 2011 78 $11.9bn

Source: The 451 M&A KnowledgeBase