Mike Ettling, the CEO at Unit4, has shut down rumours that the business is up for sale following a report by Bloomberg which was later quoted by Enterprise Times.
Unit4 is owned by Advent International, a private equity business that acquired the software company for around $1.2bn in 2013. According to the Bloomberg article, Advent has been approached by a SPAC (special purpose acquisition company) with a $2bn price tag being discussed. However, when ERP Today spoke to Ettling he said: “We are a fast growing cloud company and there is always interest. There’s lots of money looking for a home at the moment but our focus is on building a $1bn revenue market leading ERP business.”
As Ettling states, there is a huge pot of ‘dry powder’ in the market and getting into high-growth cloud businesses is a top priority for many investors. However, our take is that it is unlikely that Advent will sell Unit4 just yet – sure, they will look to exit at some point in the not too distant future but we can see Unit4 being valued at significantly more than $2bn once Ettling and his team have fully developed the Unit4 proposition and it’s likely that Advent will hold until they can achieve a higher valuation.
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For now, it’s business as usual at Unit4.
