M&A roundup - week ending 8/8/15

Steven Loeb · August 8, 2015 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/3f62

Microsoft bought FantasySalesTeam; Adidas purchased Runtastic; IBM acquired Merge Healthcare

1010data, a provider of cloud-based big data analytics for retail, manufacturing, telecom and financial services enterprises, was acquired by Advance/Newhouse, an affiliate of Advance Publications. The acquisition price was $500 million.

Advance is a global media company that operates Bright House Networks, Condé Nast magazines such as the New Yorker, Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Wired, as well as American City Business Journals. It also holds a significant interest in Discovery Communications and Reddit. 

1010data, which had raised $35 million, will continue to operate independently as a subsidiary, which will include all employees, in all capacities.

Tencent, the second-largest Chinese Internet company, is looking to expand its horizons a bit, and challenge Alibaba, by getting into the travel business, making a proposal to buy eLong, which is a Chinese online travel service provider offering hotel and air ticket booking services.

It is offering $18 per American depositary share in a preliminary, nonbinding proposal. That represents a 24% premium to eLong's closing price stock price on Friday.

Tencent already owns part of eLong: 5,038,500 high-vote ordinary shares and 6,031,500 ordinary shares of eLong, which adds up to approximately 15.0% of the aggregate voting power of the Company.

Grocery delivery service Instacart purchased Wedding Party, an app turned weddings into social experiences. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. 

This was an acqui-hire, as no technology from Wedding Party will be integrated into Instacart, and a majority of its team, six out of eight, will be joining Instacart as full time employees. They will focus on consumer-facing aspects to Instacart’s technology, as well as its partner products, including the partner interface and catalogs.

Founded in 2012, Wedding Party had raised a $1 million seed round from Felicis Ventures and New Enterprise Associates, followed by an undisclosed amount of Series A funding from Pejman Mar Ventures and Streamlined Ventures.

Despite the staff leaving for Instacart, Wedding Party will continue to support the product for the foreseeable future with support staff still available. 

Adidas purchased Runtastic, a company that offers products and services focusing on gathering and managing sports data and linking like-minded people. The price of the deal was €220 million, or roughly $240 million.

The majority owner of the company has been Axel Springer SE, which had a 50.1% share. Other main shareholders were Austrian business angel Dr. Johann Hansmann and company founders Florian Gschwandtner, Alfred Luger, René Giretzlehner and Christian Kaar who will continue to run Runtastic within the Adidas Group.

Headquartered in Pasching, Austria, Runtastic provides a sports tracking and management solution that includes both hardware and software. Going forward, Runtastic will remain as its own entity within the Adidas Group. It will continue to operate from its current offices in Linz, Austria, Vienna and San Francisco. 

Its over 20 apps include a pedometer, an altimeter and a heart rate monitor. There are apps decided to mountain biking, push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups, squats, leg exercises, butt exercises and a nutrition quiz. Its main app, Runtastic Me, syncs to the Runtastic Orbit wearable, which tracks sleep and fitness. It also sells a heart rate monitor, a running set, earphones, and an armband.

Founded in 2009, the company had raised only around $214,000 in funding, last raising capital in 2012.

Informatica, a publically traded provider of enterprise data integration software and services, was purchased for $5.3 billion to a company controlled by the Permira funds and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB). Informatica stockholders received $48.75 in cash per share. 

That means that Informatica will cease trading on the NASDAQ. The company also now has a new CEO in Anil Chakravarthy, its former chief product officer. Sohaib Abbasi, who had been both chairman and chief executive officer for over a decade, will continue to serve as chairman of Informatica. Bruce Chizen, former chief executive officer of Adobe, has joined Informatica as a board member and as a special advisor to the company.

It was also announced that Microsoft Corporation and Salesforce Ventures have both agreed to become strategic investors in the company.

Intent Games, the parent company of FantasySalesTeam, a software platform that allows sales leaders to run more sales contests modeled on fantasy sports, was acquired by Microsoft. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

The company acquired the FantasySalesTeam product and IP as well as some of the employees, including founder and CEO Adam Hollander. The FantasySalesTeam platform will be integrated into Microsoft's offerings. 

FantasySalesTeam, founded in 2012, had raised $1.4 million in venture capital.

Nokia sold its HERE digital mapping and location services business to a consortium of automotive companies, comprising AUDI AG, BMW Group and Daimler AG. The transaction values HERE at an enterprise value of EUR 2.8 billion. Upon closing, Nokia estimates that it will receive net proceeds of slightly above EUR 2.5 billion.

HERE generated an operating profit of EUR 28 million for the first half of 2015, and an operating loss of EUR 1 241 million for the full year 2014. At the end of June 2015, HERE had 6,454 employees.

Upon closing of the HERE transaction, Nokia will consist of two businesses: Nokia Networks and Nokia Technologies. Nokia Networks will continue to be a leading provider of broadband infrastructure software and services. Nokia Technologies will continue to provide advanced technology development and licensing.

Netherlands-based mobile marketer iQU acquired two other mobile marketing companies TinyLoot and Target Gamers. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. 

With these acquisitions, iQU will restructure itself to build a new arm called Mobilize, which will focus on soft launching and initial user acquisition. It will be headed by Oliver Kern, who ran both firms. Mobilize will offer services such as marketing campaign management and soft-launch management for the French, German, Russian, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, and English-speaking markets.

TinyLoot had raised $220,000 in venture funding, 

Co-working space provider WeWork acquired Case, a building information modeling and consultancy firm. Terms of the deal were undisclosed.

Case provides strategic advising to building design professionals, contractors and owners seeking to supplant traditional project delivery methods through technology-driven process innovation. Its helps clients identify, implement and manage the technologies and business practices that enable more effective coordination, communication and collaboration.

More than 90 percent of the Case workforce is joining WeWork. After completing existing contracts, the building information management company will work exclusively with WeWork.

Affirm acquired education lender LendLayer. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. 

LendLayer was started last year in San Francisco by coding bootcamp graduates and grew to lending institutions by providing financing to students at several schools across the country, including Epicodus, New York Code + Design Academy, and Hackbright Academy.

The company, which raised $400,000 will continue to exist separately to service current LendLayer borrowers but will not offer new loans going forward.

IBM agreed to purchase Merge Healthcare, a medical imaging company. Under terms of the transaction, Merge shareholders would receive $7.13 per share in cash, for a total transaction value of $1 billion. 

Merge’s technology platforms are used at more than 7,500 U.S. healthcare sites, as well as most of the world’s leading clinical research institutes and pharmaceutical firms to manage a growing body of medical images. IBM plans to fold the company into the Watson Health unit. 

The planned acquisition bolsters IBM’s strategy to add rich image analytics with deep learning to the Watson Health platform – in effect, advancing Watson beyond natural language and giving it the ability to “see.” 

Hardware engineering firm Supplyframe acquired Tindie, a marketplace for makers to fund and sell their hardware creations. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. 

Tindie will continue to operate independently from Supplyframe, but will become part of the family next to maker blog Hackaday.

Founded in 2012, Tindie had raised $1.7 million in seed funding from Andreessen Horowitz and Slow Ventures.

Browser maker Opera acquired subscription-based mobile-app-discovery service Bemobi. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.

Working with mobile operators, Bemobi's proprietary app-wrapping technology allows smartphone owners access to unlimited use of premium mobile apps for a small weekly fee. Users pay for this service through their mobile operator billing systems, making the service highly effective in emerging markets, where credit-card and debit-card penetration is low.

The acquisition of Bemobi allows Opera to expand to Latin America and brings a whole range of services from Opera's portfolio of products to the region.

The acquisition will be completed in 3Q 2015. Pedro Ripper will continue as CEO of Bemobi.

(Image source: blog.adidas-group.com)

Support VatorNews by Donating

Read more from our "Weekly M&A Roundup" series

More episodes