Business software provider Infor has announced an investment of more than $2 billion from Koch Equity Development, with a Fortune report indicating a total financing of $2.5 billion at a $10 billion valuation. The investment wing of Koch Industries will join two private equity firms as co-owners: Golden Gate Capital first invested in Infor during 2002, while Summit Partners has backed the company since 2012.
Infor’s enterprise planning software helps businesses manage inventory, logistics and other resources. The company uses Amazon Web Services instead of its own datacenters, allowing it to devote capital to improving functionality rather than infrastructure. Led by CEO Charles Phillips, Infor employs some 15,000 people across more than 170 countries.
Koch reportedly beat out private equity competitors to close the deal, which makes a lot of sense: The US software sector has been the target of increasing PE interest in recent years. Deal count this year has already equaled 2015 and is set to reach its highest point in at least five years, according to the PitchBook Platform.
The biggest private equity deal in software so far this year is Vista Equity Partners’ $6.5 billion take-private purchase of Solera, a provider of risk & asset management software. More recently, Thoma Bravo’s $3 billion acquisition of Qlik Technologies, a provider of data visualization and analytics software, was another headline-grabber.
Those two firms lead the increasingly active group of PEGs in US software. Vista is the runaway leader with 69 deals completed since the start of 2012, and Thoma Bravo ranks second with 42. Insight Venture Partners comes next with 38 transactions, followed by Summit (31), TA Associates (30) and Accel-KKR (28).
Article by PitchBook
