Analysis of Six Data & Analytics Deals - April 30 - May 6, 2024
TL;DR - Another busy week in Data & Analytics M&A
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May 3 - With Intelligence, the provider of investment intelligence for allocating, fundraising and business development, announced the acquisition of Highworth Research, publisher of the largest online database of single family offices internationally.
This marks With Intelligence’s eighth acquisition since February 2020 and the second since With Intelligence received a majority investment from Motive Partners in July 2023.
Not much to add here. This is a straightforward tuck-in acquisition for CEO Charlie Kerr’s With Intelligence. Many more acquisitions expected in the years to come.
May 3 - Greenoaks Capital Partners and Long Path Partners announced a public offer to the shareholders of Karnov Group. The Offer values all outstanding ordinary shares in the Company at SEK 9,062 million [USD833m] and the ordinary shares not already owned or controlled by members of the Bid Consortium or any of their closely related parties or closely related companies at SEK 7,222 million [USD670m].
The offer to take Scandinavian Legal & Regulatory Data & Analytics provider private values Karnov at over double the SEK 4,200 million [USD388m] valuation at which Five Arrows listed them at back in 2019. Karnov is a huge player regionally. We assume that the two American investors see an opportunity to expand their geographic focus, while adding to their local product suite.
May 1 - Vista Equity Partners-backed automotive data and software services provider Solera Global Corp. has filed confidentially for an initial public offering.
According to Mergers & Acquisitions,
“Westlake, Texas-based Solera announced the filing in a statement and didn’t offer any additional details. Its IPO could launch as soon as July and raise more than $1 billion, Bloomberg News has reported. The company has picked banks including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Jefferies to work on the offering, people familiar with the matter have said.”
Another participant in the Private Equity game of public → private → public hokey cokey. The linked-to article mentions lots of relevant detail from Automotive Data & Analytics, Software and Services provider Solera’s recent history:
In 2016, Vista led a group of investors including a unit of Koch Industries Inc. that took Solera private in a deal that valued the company at about $6.5bn;
Vista entered negotiations in 2021 to merge Solera, as well as its companies DealerSocket Inc. and Omnitracs, with a SPAC in a $15 billion transaction. This didn’t happen;
Solera subsequently acquired DealerSocket and Omnitracs;
Solera also acquired digital driver risk management firm eDriving and Australian insurance technology provider ENData Pty Ltd. later in 2021.
Tech valuations are down since the heady SPAC-bubble days of 2021, so it will be interesting to see what number the bankers arrive at for the initial offer price.
May 1 - Intel471, a provider of cyber threat intelligence (CTI) solutions, acquired Cyborg Security, a provider of advanced threat hunting capabilities and expertise.
We had an introductory look at the Cyber Security Data & Analytics space two weeks ago when we dug into SecurityScorecard. Here’s the article:
This is Intel471’s second acquisition since Thoma Bravo invested in September 2021. Both Cyborg Security and SpiderFoot add data and technology to Intel471’s cybersecurity insights platform. Small deals in the scale of things for Thoma Bravo. If Thoma Bravo’s widely reported USD4.9bn bid for Darktrace is successful, it will be interesting to see if they combine the two businesses in due course.
April 30 - SafeBase, the Trust Center Platform for friction-free security reviews, announced it had raised $33m in a Series B funding round. This latest investment, which brings the company’s total funding to over $50 million, is led by Touring Capital with participation by strategic investor Zoom Ventures. The round is also joined by existing investors NEA (New Enterprise Associates), Y Combinator, Comcast Ventures, and Cerca Partners.
This is the only fundraise we’re reporting this week, although there have been many others of note. This one is substantial enough to remark on, plus this Data & Analytics business is doing something particularly interesting. SafeBase enable the rapid completion of risk assessments of software vendors, in the process building a massive risk scoring database for those vendors. There is a lot of value here. SafeBase is a company to watch.
April 18 (announced April 30) - Climavision, a provider of weather modelling and forecasting technology, has acquired Intersphere, a specialist in subseasonal-to-seasonal (S2S) forecasting – predicting weather up to a year in advance.
If you visit TPG-backed Climavision’s website, you won’t take you long to find Climavision’s focus on building a network of weather-monitoring radars across the US, mainly installed on top of water towers with a clear focus on Tornado Alley. Intersphere adds an intelligence layer on top of this network, complimenting Climavision’s existing Weather Data & Analytics smarts.