Vista Equity Partners and Blackstone have agreed to acquire Smartsheet, the software-as-a-service (SaaS) workplace collaboration platform, for $8.4 billion in cash.
The private equity firms say that the deal values publicly traded Smartsheet’s shares at a 41% premium over its 90-day average closing share price. Should regulators and shareholders approve it, shareholders would receive approximately $56.50 per share.
Under the agreement with Vista and Blackstone, Smartsheet will have a 45-day “go-shop” period to solicit alternative M&A offers. Smartsheet’s board, meanwhile, will reserve the right to terminate the Vista and Blackstone deal to accept a better proposal “subject to the terms and conditions of the merge agreement.”
“Our next phase of growth and customer success is underway, and we look forward to partnering with Blackstone and Vista Equity Partners to accelerate our vision of modernizing work management for enterprises, globally,” Smartsheet CEO Mark Mader said in a press release. “This transaction is a testament to our employees’ outstanding work in serving customers and partners, and building an enterprise-grade, market-leading platform.”
Founded in 2005, Smartsheet offers a range of tools to assign workplace tasks, track project progress, and share files via a tabular UI.
Adoption was initially slow because the software was too cumbersome to use, Smartsheet co-founder Brent Frei once said in an interview. But within a few years and after an aggressive redesign, Smartsheet managed to attract thousands of users to its platform.
By 2010, Smartsheet had over a million users across 20,000 organizations, integrations with Microsoft Office 365 and Microsoft Azure, and an iOS app.
Today, Smartsheet offers connectors for Google apps as well as additional Office software, and works with popular storage, cloud, and customer relationship management platforms including Salesforce and Dropbox. Competing against products like Asana and Monday.com, Smartsheet claims to serve around 85% of the Fortune 500.
The Bellevue-based company has been on an upward trajectory lately. In its most recent fiscal quarter, Smartsheet posted better-than-expected earnings, notching $276.4 million in revenue (up 17%, beating analysts’ expectations) and projecting full-fiscal-year revenue between $1.11 billion to $1.12 billion.
The rosy results came in months after Smartsheet began discussing a potential buyout with private equity firms, according to Reuters. One would imagine that helped the org negotiate favorable terms.
Smartsheet said that it had $334 million in cash on hand and carried no debt as of the end of April 2024. And, as of September 5, Smartsheet was valued at $6.83 billion.
Should the deal go through, Smartsheet will add to Vista and Blackstone’s respective growing portfolios of enterprise-focused tech ventures. Earlier this year, Vista bought enterprise procurement and collaboration software vendor Jaggaer and took a majority stake in data storage software maker Nasuni. Blackstone, for its part, recently acquired data center group AirTrunk and public sector software solutions provider Civica.
“Across increasingly distributed, cross-functional, and global workforces, Smartsheet’s innovative and market-leading solutions are mission-critical in helping teams collaborate at scale to achieve superior results,” Blackstone head of North America private equity Martin Brand and senior managing director Sachin Bavishi said in a statement. “We are excited to partner with Smartsheet’s management team to drive long-term growth by leveraging our and our partner Vista’s combined scale and resources to accelerate investments in the next generation of work management solutions.”
Private equity activity saw its strongest quarter in two years in Q2 2024, according to data from EY. Firms announced 122 deals valued at $196 billion, nearly double the $100 billion announced in Q1.
