M&A roundup - week ending 6/25/2016

Twitter bought Magic Pony; Pinterest acquired tote; Red Hat purchased 3scale

Twitter acquired Magic Pony, a company that uses machine learning to enhance visual processing. No financial terms of the deal have been disclosed.

Rob Bishop, Magic Pony's CEO and co-founder, will be working out of Twitter's headquarters in San Francisco, while his fellow co-founder Zehan Wang, and the other members of the 14-person Magic Pony team, will join Twitter's office in London.

Going forward, the employees of Magic Pony will be working on Twitter Cortex.

Founded 18 months ago, Magic Pony had raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Entrepreneur First.

Pinterest acquired the team behind shopping app tote. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

Mike Bidgoli, co-founder and CEO, of tote will join as product manager, and co-founder Langtian Lang will join as a software engineer. The tote team will be working on growth and monetization.

The tote product will be sunsetted, and tote users will be able to migrate their account to Pinterest.

Founded in 2015, tote had raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Adam Foroughi, Plug and Play and Tim O'Shaughnessy.

Snagajob, a job search site for hourly workers, acquired workforce management platform PeopleMatter. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

In the near term, customers can expect to interact with each company as they always have. Once the integration is complete, Snagajob expects customers to enjoy an expanded offering that draws upon the breadth of expertise from both companies.

Founded in 2009, PeopleMatter was used by more than 47,000 locations. The company had raised $63.4 million in venture funding from C&B Capital, Harbert Venture Partners, Intersouth Partners, Morgenthaler Ventures, Noro-Moseley Partners, Scale Venture Partners and StarVest Partners.

Subject to customary closing conditions, the transaction is expected to close later this month.  

Red Hat, a provider of open source solutions acquired API management company 3scale. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

By adding 3scale to its existing portfolio, including Red Hat JBoss Middleware, Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat Mobile Application Platform, Red Hat strengthens its enablement of the API economy with simplified cloud integration and microservices-based architectures.

Founded in 2007, 3scale had more than 700 organizations as customers, including Campbell’s Soup, Cartera Commerce, CrunchBase, Johnson Controls, Oxford University Press, SITA, and the University of California, Berkeley. 3scale has offices in Barcelona and San Francisco.

The company had raised $5 million in venture funding.

The transaction is expected to close in June 2016, subject to customary closing conditions.

Comcast entered into an agreement to acquire assets from Icontrol Networks, a provider of connected home solutions to households . No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

Comcast will acquire Icontrol’s "Converge" software platform, which powers the Xfinity Home touch-screen panel and back-end servers, allowing them to communicate with and manage security sensors in the home, as well as supporting home-automation devices like cameras and thermostats.

The Icontrol employees in Austin who are joining Comcast will make up a new Comcast engineering center of excellence in Austin. That team will work closely with engineers in Philadelphia and Silicon Valley to build connected-home and connected home security products.

Comcast will strategically invest in Icontrol's technology and technologists. 

Security company Alarm.com also entered into a definitive agreement to acquire two business units from Icontrol. The purchase price was $140 million. 

Alarm.com acquired Connect, which provides an interactive security and home automation platfor, and Piper, which designs, produces and sells a Wi-Fi-enabled video and home automation hub. 

The transaction is expected to be completed by the end of 2016 and is subject to customary closing conditions, regulatory approvals as well as the closing of Comcast's acquisition of Icontrol's Converge business unit. 

Founded in 2003, Icontrol had raised $93.5 million in funding from Cisco, Comcast Ventures, Intel Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, among others. 

Tradeshift, a procure-to-pay network ad platform, acquired chat-based travel assistant app Hyper. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

The acquisition will power Tradeshift Go, a free virtual assistant with a conversational user interface that simplifies payments and travel booking.

Hyper, which was founded in 2014, will remain a separate app. 

Francisco Partners, a  private equity firm, and hedge fund management firm Elliott Management Corporation, signed a definitive agreement to acquire the Dell Software Group. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

The agreement bolsters Francisco Partners and Elliott Management’s technology portfolios with the addition of Dell Software’s combination of security, systems and information management, and data analytics solutions.

Debt financing for this transaction was provided by Credit Suisse and RBC Capital Markets. Barclays and Citigroup acted as lead financial advisors and Shearman & Sterling, Kirkland & Ellis, and Gibson Dunn as legal advisors to Francisco Partners and Evergreen Coast Capital. Goldman, Sachs & Co. acted as exclusive financial advisor and Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett LLP acted as legal advisors to Dell.

JD.com acquired Chinese e-commerce company Yihaodian from Walmart. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

Walmart will continue to operate the Yihaodian direct sales business and will be a seller on the Yihaodian marketplace, leveraging its global supply chain to provide customers a wide range of products.

JD.com and Walmart will work together on growing the Yihaodian brand and business under its current name and market position.

A consortium established by Tencent signed a definitive agreement to acquire up to 84 percent of game developer Supercell. The deal is worth $10.2 billion (approximately JPY 1.1 trillion).

Following the transaction, Supercell will be owned by the Consortium and by Supercell’s employees.

Supercell will retain its independent operations, the headquarters will remain in Helsinki, Finland and its existing team will continue to run all operations of the Company. To focus on continued success, every employee is already an equity holder in Supercell and the partnership with Tencent will significantly enhance this commitment. Every employee will take part in a new long-term incentive plan, and will be able to sell their vested shares annually to Tencent.

Founded in 2010, Supercell raised $143.03 million from Accel, Atomico, Index Ventures, and Lifeline Ventures, among others.

The transaction, which is currently expected to close during the third calendar quarter of 2016, is subject to customary regulatory approvals and closing conditions.

Digital media company Purch acquired Business.com, an online resource portal for small- to mid-sized businesses. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

The deal expands Purch's omni-category approach to decision enablement. The company is now in over 1,200 categories spanning consumer electronics, technology, home, outdoor, health and more. The transaction also allows Purch to further extend its successful, and scalable, content and commerce business model into the lucrative SMB market – a key audience segment for the growing company.

Founded in 1999, Business.com had raised $61 million from McGraw-Hill Companies.

Diversified location based media company oOh!media entered into an agreement to acquire 85 percent of on-line content and publishing company Junkee Media. The deal is worth $11.05 million, equivalent to a valuation of $13.0m for 100% of the company), with a right to acquire the remaining 15% of shares from the three remaining Junkee Media shareholders.

 The acquisition reflects oOh!’s end to end digital strategy to increase consumer engagement and drive advertiser return on investment.

Founded in 2000, Junkee Media's online publications attract more than 1.25 million Australian unique visitors a month and it reaches more than 5.5 million Millennials through its social channels every week.

Barnes & Noble Education, a contract operators of bookstores on college and university campuses, completed the acquisition of the assets of Promoversity, a custom merchandise supplier and e-commerce storefront solution. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

The acquisition of Promoversity will enable Barnes & Noble College, a division of Barnes & Noble Education, to customize its e-commerce offerings and drive on-campus apparel sales with numerous constituent shopping groups.

Promoversity will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Barnes & Noble College, and continue to operate independently under the leadership of Doug Murphy who, along with the existing management team, will manage the company’s day-to-day operations and support all of its customers.

NexusTek, a managed IT services and business software consulting services firm, acquired iPremise, a provider of small business solutions. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

The transaction expanded NexusTek to more than 65 Denver-based employees providing service to nearly 600 clients. Rob Bosch, President and Co-Founder of iPremise, is being to the NexusTek management team as Executive Vice President. 

NexusTek will now offer VoIP services that include conference calling, find-me/follow-me, and call queues with real-time reporting. 

Fareportal, a travel technology company, acquired tripcombi, a metasearch website that specializes in sourcing affordable flights. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

The acquisition of tripcombi, formerly known as tripdelta, expands Fareportal’s global portfolio of travel brands. It will also strengthen its presence in Europe.

Like Fareportal’s other brands, tripcombi provides consumers with user-friendly search features to seek and secure affordable flights quickly and with ease. Fareportal’s acquisition of tripcombi complements the company’s overall customer service offering giving consumers the opportunity to conveniently choose and book affordable air travel.

Fishidy, a social network for fishing, acquired FishingCrew, an app market for real-time sharing of fishing experiences, catch locations, conditions and other data points critical to fishing success. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

With the acquisition, Fishidy gains a significant amount of new members in the South and especially the state of Texas, a major hotbed for fishing activity relative to the rest of the country.

For the meantime, both the Fishidy app and the FishingCrew app will continue to operate as separate entities until the full migration of information is complete on the Fishidy platform. 

Fishidy also acquired Ryple, a fly fishing app and web service that predicts hatch activity. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

Fishidy plans to leverage the technology. Basic Fishidy members will have access to the current day's hatch forecast and fishing activity level for specific streams, while premium subscribers unlock access to full 7-day forecasts on all 8,000+ streams across the U.S.

Going forward, Ryple will no longer be offered as a standalone service. 

Thoma Bravo, a private equity investment firm, completed the acquisition of Bomgar, a provider of secure access solutions, from TA Associates. Financial details were not disclosed.

Founded in 2003, more than 10,000 organizations across 80 countries use Bomgar to deliver superior support services and reduce threats to valuable data and systems. Bomgar is privately held with offices in Atlanta, Jackson, Washington D.C., Frankfurt, London, Paris, and Singapore

The company had raised $11 million in venture funding. 

Ropes & Gray LLP served as legal advisor to Thoma Bravo. William Blair & Company LLC served as financial advisor to Bomgar, and Kirkland & Ellis LLP served as legal advisor to Bomgar.

ProQuest, an information-content and technology company, acquired Alexander Street Press, which publishes curated, discipline-focused, primary-source collections, websites, and streaming media. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

The companies’ complementary content assets will enable libraries, faculty and students to improve research and learning outcomes.

The business, which will be known as “Alexander Street, a ProQuest Company”, will be led by Stephen Rhind-Tutt, its current president. reporting to Rafael Sidi,Senior Vice President and General Manager, ProQuest Information Solutions. It will maintain its headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia.

Nielsen completed its acquisition of Repucom, a provider of sports measurement, evaluation and intelligence. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

The acquisition will expand Nielsen’s sports offerings globally. As a result of the acquisition, Nielsen clients will be able to use Repucom’s methodologies.

Founded in 2004, Repucom's technologies measure more than 5.3 million hours of content and 1.1 million interviews per year. The company had raised $110,000 in venture funding.

 PetalMD, a cloud-based application featuring productivity tools for healthcare professionals, acquired Workoptics, a cloud-based workforce management platform. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

With this acquisition, PetalMD's network now includes over 29,000 Canadian physicians.

Workoptics users will now be able to benefit from a larger portfolio of solutions that not only includes physician scheduling, but also patient appointment booking in clinics, real-time hospital on-call lists and secure messaging for physicians.

Zeel, a provider of massage on demand services, acquired MassageNow, which partners with high-end spas to fulfill last-minute spa massage appointment, from parent company Locality. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

The acquisition allows Zeel to increase its market share in New York City and San Francisco, while growing its Zeel Spa offering.  Zeel Massage On Demand is available in 32 cities and their surrounding areas in the United States.

MassageNow customers will be migrated to Zeel effective immediately, where they can use their existing MassageNow gift credits to book in-home Zeel Massages in any Zeel location, or purchase a monthly in-home spa massage membership through Zeel's subscription program, Massage Zeelot.

MassageNow launched in 2014.  

Spaceflight Industries, a space company dedicated to democratizing access to space, acquired OpenWhere, a provider of elements for building and deploying highly distributed M2M systems for powering information services solutions. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

The acquisition allows SpaceFlight to further enhance and execute on its BlackSky geospatial data platform for satellite imagery. Initially launched in June 2015, the BlackSky geospatial data platform will deliver near-real-time images of the planet. 

OpenWhere had raised $1 million in venture funding.

Stamps.com, a provider of postage online and shipping software solutions, entered into a definitive agreement to acquire ShippingEasy, a company that offers Web-based multi-carrier shipping software. Stamps.com paid $55 million in cash, which will be funded from current cash balances.

Stamps.com plans for ShippingEasy to operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary led by its existing management team.

Founded in 2011, ShippingEasy had raised $2 million in venture funding from Square Peg Capital.

The transaction is expected to close in early July, subject to standard closing conditions. 

(Image source: pinterest.com)