Shareholders of global CX company Medallia have approved the $6.4 billion acquisition of the company by private equity firm Thoma Bravo.
Under the terms of the agreement first announced in late July, shareholders of San Francisco-based Medallia will receive $34 per share in cash, a premium of approximately 20% to Medallia’s closing stock price on June 10, 2021—the last full day of trading before media reports started to spread about a possible transaction taking place.
The deal will convert Medallia into a private company, less than two years after it went public in 2019. Medallia will remain headquartered in San Francisco, and its common stock will be delisted from public markets when the transaction closes, which is expected to take place by November 1, 2021.
Medallia has been losing money since at least fiscal year (FY) 2018, but the acquisition is expected to leverage the deep pockets of Thoma Bravo, headquartered in Chicago with an asset-management portfolio worth $78 billion, toward making additional resources available to Medallia.
Leslie Stretch, president and CEO of Medallia, thanked shareholders for supporting the deal and expressed confidence that Medallia would be strongly positioned for its net phase of growth.
“Shareholder approval is an important milestone in our transaction with Thoma Bravo, which we believe will position Medallia to better deliver innovation to our customers,” he said.
Medallia was first approached with an unsolicited acquisition, which led to a review and evaluation from the firm’s board of directors on the company’s viability as an independent entity, along with other strategic alternatives. The board then approved the transaction with Thoma Bravo because of its “immediate and certain value” to Medallia shareholders.
Medallia is known for the Medallia Experience Cloud, its software as a service (SaaS) platform imbued with proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) technology for managing the customer and employee experience. The platform captures experience signals across interactions, including voice, video, digital, the Internet of Things (IoT), social media, and corporate messaging tools.
Thoma Bravo, meanwhile, has been active on a multibillion-dollar acquisition trail. In April, the investment firm acquired the cybersecurity group Proofpoint in a $12 billion deal, and then three months later in early July bought Stamps.com for $6.6 billion. Thoma Bravo was also the top private equity firm in 2020 to which capital was allocated by pension funds, including $2.9 billion by the California State Teachers’ Retirement System. The final voting results from shareholders will be filed in a Form 8-K with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
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Alex is responsible for writing about trends and changes that are impacting the customer experience market. He had served as Principal Editor at Village Intelligence, a Los Angeles-based consultancy on technology impacting healthcare and healthcare-related industries. Alex was also Associate Director for Content Management at Omdia and Informa Tech, where he produced white papers, executive summaries, market insights, blogs, and other key content assets. His areas of coverage spanned the sectors grouped under the technology vertical, including semiconductors, smart technologies, enterprise & IT, media, displays, mobile, power, healthcare, China research, industrial and IoT, automotive, and transformative technologies.
At IHS Markit, he was Managing Editor of the company’s flagship IHS Quarterly, covering aerospace & defense, economics & country risk, chemicals, oil & gas, and other IHS verticals. He was Principal Editor of analyst output at iSuppli Corp. and Managing Editor of Market Watch, a fortnightly newsletter highlighting significant analyst report findings for pitching to the media. He started his career in writing as an Editor-Reporter for The Associated Press.
