At the end of January, SAP announced that it would put Qualtrics up for sale.
(Photo: dpa)
Dusseldorf The planned sale of the Qualtrics subsidiary could bring in a lavish sum for SAP: the private equity company Silver Lake, together with a Canadian pension fund, offered $18.15 per outstanding share, for a total of around $12.4 billion (€11.6 billion). ).
An exclusivity agreement was concluded by March 15 to bring the negotiations to a conclusion, Qualtrics said in a statement to the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday. Completion of the transaction cannot be guaranteed. Silver Lake already holds almost 4.2 percent of the shares.
The Dax group explained that a transaction “can release significant value for both companies.” However, the final decision is “subject to the final text of the contract, the approval of the SAP SE Supervisory Board and the approval of the supervisory authorities”.
Qualtrics shares were up more than 2 percent on Monday afternoon. Since SAP put the cloud service provider up for sale, the price has risen by more than 60 percent.
At the end of January, SAP announced that it would put Qualtrics up for sale. The specialist for online market research, which the software group bought under the leadership of the then boss Bill McDermott, is no longer part of the core business under the current management.
Financial leeway
A sale of the subsidiary could give the group considerable financial leeway, CFO Luka Mucic told the Handelsblatt in January. “We would have the option to reinvest the funds in areas that are closer to core or to consider distributions to shareholders.”
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Should the negotiations be successful, SAP would make a good cut. The software manufacturer bought Qualtrics from founder Ryan Smith at the end of 2018 for eight billion dollars. At the beginning of 2021, the Dax group brought a part back to the stock exchange and later sold another block of shares. The conditions were attractive, and the market capitalization peaked at $32 billion.
Now the remaining shares are completely for sale. According to its own statements, the Dax group held 71 percent of the online market researcher on an undiluted basis as of the end of January, or around 61 percent taking stock options into account. The subsidiary’s figures are currently being fully consolidated.
SAP is currently focusing on the business with business software, called ERP in technical jargon, and is making cuts in other areas. The management has announced that it will cut 3,000 jobs worldwide as part of a restructuring.
This mainly concerns software for sales, marketing and service, called CRM or CX, as well as the development of special solutions for individual industries. These areas are to be brought together more closely – the group promises solutions tailored to individual industries such as retail, consumer goods and automotive. The details are still unclear.
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