A trade sale of a software development company in a fragile state but with a very competent product.
A small software company in a growing but very fragmented industry. The company was in a fragile phase of its development with only a handful of customers and a few employees. To survive they had downsized and were doing more and more consulting. The owners felt that they and the company probably would fall apart within the next year. They had been approached by an interested party but with no real progress or results after months of ongoing discussions, despite an interest from both parties.
Ablona happened to come across the company and eventually got the assignment to drive the process with the objective to find a suitable buyer of the company. During our analysis of the company situation and assets we discovered that beside very skilled developers the company also possessed a very well made and competent software product. Existing customers where also very satisfied with functionality and performance.
This was by no means a 'fire sale' and after five months, the company was sold to a larger venture capital backed company. Our client's software is today the software platform of the many times larger acquirer. The entrepreneurs of the target company still have leading roles at the acquirer. The purchase price became, by all means, many times higher than expected.This was due to Ablona's work of successfully positioning our client and bringing in many interested parties and managing the process.