M&A roundup - week ending 10/10/15

Apple bought Perceptio; Facebook acquired Endaga; HomeAway purchased Dwellable

LogMeIn, a provider of SaaS-based remote connectivity, acquired LastPass, a  single-sign-on and password management service. LogMeIn will pay $110 million in cash upon close for all outstanding equity interests in LastPass, with up to an additional $15 million payable upon the achievement of certain milestone and retention targets over the next two years.

Following the close of the deal, LogMeIn plans to bring complementary capabilities of its early identity management investments, including those of Meldium, which it acquired in September 2014, into LastPass.

In the near-term, both the Meldium and LastPass product lines will continue to be supported, with longer-term plans to center around a singular identity management offering based on the LastPass service and brand.

RiskIQ, an enterprise security company, acquired PassiveTotal, threat infrastructure analysis platform. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

The acquisition will allow RiskIQ to to expand its portfolio into threat analysis. The combination of RiskIQ and PassiveTotal gives customers the ability to detect threats that exist in their digital footprints and map out the attack infrastructure.

RiskIQ will continue to support and invest in the portfolio of PassiveTotal product.

Sony Corporation completed the acquisition of Softkinetic Systems after reaching an agreement with the company and its major shareholders. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

With this acquisition, Softkinetic has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony.

Softkinetic possesses time-of-flight range image sensor technology, as well as related systems and software. Sony will focus on combining Softkinetic's ToF range image sensor technology expertise with its own technologies with the aim of developing the next generation of range image sensors and solutions, not only in the field of imaging, but for broader sensing-related applications as well.

Idera, a provider of database and infrastructure management software, agreed to acquire Embarcadero Technologies, a provider software for database management and application development. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

Embarcadero’s multi-platform database management products combined with Idera’s deep SQL database performance management expertise will create the most comprehensive portfolio of database management solutions in the market.

The deal is expected to close in mid-October, subject to normal closing conditions and approvals.

Dianping and Meituan have jointly set up a new company that is expected to run the leading "online to offline," or O2O, platform in China.

Zhang Tao, CEO of Dianping, and Wang Xing, CEO of Meituan, will be the co-Chairmen and co-CEOs of the new company. Both Dianping and Meituan will retain their respective brands and management structure, and will independently operate their businesses, including high frequency to-store businesses such as groupbuy and instant payment solution.

Music streaming service Pandora acquired  ticket distribution service Ticketfly. The acquisition is worth $450 million in cash and stock.

The companies will combine their data to create new tools for music makers to increase their revenue and improve recommendations for fans to enhance their overall music experience. Moving forward, Ticketfly will continue to support its music and non-music cliens.

Founded in 2008, Ticketfly sold 16 million tickets to more than 90,000 live events, generating more than $500 million in transaction volume and crossing the $1 billion mark in cumulative transaction volume in 2014. An average of 14 million people visit Ticketfly.com and its network of client sites each month.

The company has raised $87 million in venture funding.

IBM acquired Cleversafe, a data storage vendor. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

Once the deal closes, IBM will integrate the Cleversafe portfolio into its IBM Cloud business unit to give clients strategic data flexibility, simplified management, and consistency with on-premise, cloud, and hybrid cloud deployment options. The deal is expected to close later this year.

Founded in 2004, Cleversafe has more than 350 patents in object-based, on-premise storage solutions that enable clients to scale to exabytes of storage, or billions of gigabytes. Clients across multiple industries use Cleversafe for large-scale content repository, backup, archive, collaboration and storage as a service.

Cleversafe had raised over $100 million in venture funding.

Global management consultancy Kurt Salmon acquired digital retail technology agency Mobispoke. No financial details were disclosed.

Following the acquisition, Mobispoke will rebrand as Kurt Salmon Digital and will continue to operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of Kurt Salmon. The transaction is expected to complete within the next few weeks.

Under the Kurt Salmon Digital brand, Mobispoke will continue to work with its existing retail clientele while augmenting the suite of services that is offered under the Kurt Salmon brand more broadly. As Kurt Salmon Digital, Rob Howard will lead the organization, while Eric Shea and Andrew Wong will remain on board to continue driving digital innovation and client services.

Sears Holding Corp. acquired the WallyHome sensor technology from sensor network startup SNUPI Technologies. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

Sears will be licensing SNUPI's technology, and SNUPI will provide consulting services to Sears for future Connected Solutions products. As part of the acquisition, Sears will be adding four new employees.

As part of the acquisition, Sears will also assume a 10,000-square-foot lease on the University of Washington campus, where it will operate a new tech development center. Parag Garg, Sears Holdings’ CTO of Connected Solutions, will run the new Sears office.

A consortium of entertainment, media and technology executives including Peter Levin, Steve Kaplan, Brian Lee, and Allen DeBevoise, among others, acquired Team 8, an e-sports franchise. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

Under the new ownership, the team will be renamed Immortals. Noah Whinston has been named CEO and Crosscut Ventures' Clinton Foy will assume the role of chairman. 

Immortals also launched with a marketing and technology partner in AMD. AMD is a global leader in high-performance computing, graphics, and visualization technologies used extensively in the gaming community.

Palisis, a travel technology company focussed on ticketing for local tour operators, acquired TravelUCD, owner of tours and activities technology system TourCMS. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

The acquisition will provide TourCMS with resources that will be used to enhance and support the company;s reservation system and distribution service. This includes a focus on both day and multi-day tours.

Alex Bainbridge, founder and CEO of TOurCMS, and his team will join Palisis and TourCMS will remain its own brand.

Video game developer Ubisoft acquired French game studio Ivory Tower, the maker of The Crew racing game. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

Ubisoft will be integrating the studio’s expertise into its global network of talents. The 100 team members will be coming to work at Ubisoft.

The Ivory Tower team will continues to focus on supporting The Crew, and is will release of The Crew Wild Run on November 17th.

Rogue Wave Software, a provider of cross-platform software development tools, acquired Zend Technologies a PHP app-development and deployment company. No financial terms were disclosed.

Zend supports and enables millions of PHP developers with its product set: Zend Server, Z-Ray, Zend Studio, and Zend Guard. With 50 percent of the web workload running on PHP, including Magento, Drupal, and WordPress, Zend products drive PHP in the enterprise, from code creation through production deployment.

Founded in 1999, Zend Technologies raised $44 million in venture funding. 

HomeAway, an online marketplace for the vacation rental industry, acquired Dwellable, an online vacation rental search engine and vacation rental app. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

The Dwellable team and mobile app technology will be leveraged for the enhancement of the HomeAway® app, to enable families and groups to experience the beauty of whole vacations.

Dwellable will phase out its mobile app and website, therefore new reservations ceased to be accepted after October 1. Similarly, owners and property managers will not be able to access listings on Dwellable after this date, but will use HomeAway to do so.

Founded in 2012, Dwellable has raised $2 million in venture funding.

Geotab, a global provider of telematics technology, acquired customer service provider Strategic Telecom Solutions. No financial terms were disclosed. 

The acquisition allows Geotab to xxpand into small-fleet market and offer additional services, such as tablet-based telematics. It will also allow it to scale up sales platforms and revenue, grow critical business departments, and enhance the overall customer experience.

Founded in 2004, STS has amassed more than 65,000 subscribers across more than 3,000 customers and has forged a sterling reputation as a first-class customer service provider.

LAKANA, an enterprise-class content management platform, acquired Kixer, an advertising technology platform focused on optimizing and driving new mobile revenue streams for content publishers. No financial terms were disclosed.

Kixer helps mobile marketers promote their products across a portfolio of over 400 premium web publications that in aggregate reach over 110 million unique visitors and generate 1.5 billion page views per month. Kixer’s native app recommendation units and marketplace are leveraged by over 80 app developers, including most of the top 50 grossing apps.

Founded in 2014, Kixer had raised $1 million in seed funding.

Facebook acquired Endaga, a company that bring cellular networks to everyone who still lacks access to network connectivity worldwide. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

As part of this deal, members of Endaga team will be joining Facebook and it will wind down our business operations.

While there is no mention of what the team will do, it seems likely that it will become part of Facebook's Internet.org team, which is looking to bring the entire world online.

Simply Color Lab, a professional photography printer, acquired virtual studio manager ShootQ. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

ShootQ's software includes invoices, contracts and questionnaires, client and lead management, schedule management, and the ability to automate scheduled emails as part of a shoot's workflow.

The ShootQ team will be coming to work at Simply Color Lab. The acquisition allows ShootQ subscribers access to Simply Color Lab product discounts and exclusive ShootQ loyalty programs.

Infocus, a manufacturer of DLP and LCD projectors, acquired video wall and enterprise collaboration innovator Jupiter Systems. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

The acquisition expands InFocus’ offering to include display wall processor technology, bringing a 360-degree view of operations to any control room, conference room, and mobile device. It also enables InFocus to provide end-to-end collaboration solutions and become the single provider for customers’ collaboration technology needs.

Jupiter Systems is now an InFocus’ branded product line for control room and enterprise collaboration solutions. All Jupiter employees are now InFocus team members and both the Jupiter product line office  and InFocus corporate headquarters will operate business as usual.

(Image source: bibgroup.net)