9 ms·

Qlik acquired by Thoma Bravo for $3B

87 points by dgudkov 10y ago

aaronbrethorst 10y ago
What is this, and why is this on the front page of HN? Are either Qlik or Thoma Bravo companies that I should know about?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- parasubvert 10y ago
  Qlik is one of the major data visualization tools like Tableau. This is part of a trend of activist investors and/or private equity taking companies private because the Street has unrealistic expectations.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - mark_integerdsv 10y ago
    Interesting, could you point to some other examples or otherwise expand a bit on this please? I work in the field and I'm currently looking at choosing software, this info might be very important in these decisions.
- elgabogringo 10y ago
  http://lmgtfy.com/?q=qlik http://lmgtfy.com/?q=qlik
  - quadrature 10y ago
    I think they mean it more in the context of why its relevant to HN. usually we only talk about acquisitions of YC companies.
    - qq66 10y ago
      It's relevant because it's a $3b sale of a data visualization software company, which is more than any YC acquisition and bigger than all but a handful of YC companies.
      - genericpseudo 10y ago
        And it's a public-to-private transaction, not a takeover.
        ledude 10y ago
        "In business, a takeover is the purchase of one company (the target) by another (the acquirer, or bidder). In the UK, the term refers to the acquisition of a public company whose shares are listed on a stock exchange, in contrast to the acquisition of a private company." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takeover https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takeover http://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/takeover.asp http://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/takeover.asp
        genericpseudo 10y ago
        OK, but my meaning was hopefully clear. It's essentially a leveraged MBO.
    - untog 10y ago
      > usually we only talk about acquisitions of YC companies. That's objectively untrue.
- _RPM 10y ago
  All due respect, but i'm not sure it's a violation of the rules for a link about a company to be on the front page without you knowing who the company is.
  - aaronbrethorst 10y ago
    It's not. I was looking for context beyond what a press release could provide. All due respect.
- jacquesm 10y ago
  https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/thoma-bravo https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/thoma-bravo https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/qliktech#/entity https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/qliktech#/entity
- cthulhu-bot 10y ago
  Thoma Bravo is and let me tell you why. The last company I worked at went through an acquisition with Thoma Bravo and the very next day after acquisition was confirmed we walked into the office and there were security guards in suits with ear pieces patrolling the office. At 9am they locked half of us in conference rooms and told us that everyone who wasn't in a conference room was getting laid off. We weren't allowed to leave the conference rooms for an hour out of "respect" for everyone gathering their stuff into boxes and they said that the security was there for "our safety". Thoma Bravo is currently bleeding that company dry and running it on a skeleton crew while it slowly circles the drain. This experience has made me super wary of private equity firms in general but this company in particular.
  - chris_wot 10y ago
    That's terrible!
  - pinewurst 10y ago
    Attachmate which owns SUSE Linux is another one of Thoma Bravo's creatures btw
  - aaronbrethorst 10y ago
    Awesome, thank you.
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    I guess we will know in 24 hours what happens with Qlik then.
  - frik 10y ago
    I guess Compuware, Detroit / Dynatrace. Or Riverbed. Having several similar products ... you know what it means: https://thomabravo.com/portfolio/all/current/ https://thomabravo.com/portfolio/all/current/
    - cthulhu-bot 10y ago
      Several similar products indeed. Since I was at none of the above it seems they have a track record now and people should know what to expect.
- chris_wot 10y ago
  Never heard of Thoma Bravo, but I suggest that if you have any interest in BI tools that you at least learn who Qlik are.
rshm 10y ago
I am unaware about the current situation, but two years back qlick related jobs used to be a high paying and in-demand.
- chris_wot 10y ago
  They still are!
askafriend 10y ago
I'm hearing both names for the first time, which is quite surprising in the context of a $3B acquisition.
- dopamean 10y ago
  Is it really? The world is a big place with very many multibillion dollar companies. I'd be surprised if most people could name more than 10% of them.
  - gelatocar 10y ago
    Naming and hearing of are very different things.
dgudkov 10y ago
I've been following Qlik and their competition with Tableau for quite a while. Qlik is a bigger and older company than Tableau. It's more focused on the technical side of data analysis rather than on UI/UX (Tableau does the opposite). They reached the point where their old product (QlikView) has accumulated too much technical debt so they don't develop it actively anymore. But their new product (Qlik Sense) is not ready for prime time yet (again because of shortcomings in UI/UX), even though it's very ambitious as it's basically a development platform (think Meteor for analytical apps). It seems like going private would give the company management more freedom to make bold decisions. Staying public meant having extra pressure from public investors which are typically short-term-minded. All in all it's probably a good move for Qlik.
- jackmaney 10y ago
  About three years ago, I was at a place that used Qlikview, and it was the worst software I've ever used in my life. It's technically able to handle larger datasets than Excel, but it's much slower than Excel at any kind of analysis or aggregation, it doesn't make use of SQL (even though the data it handles is tabular...instead, it uses a home-brewed, mangled, and inferior query language), and its visualizations and UI are sub-par compared to Tableau. Good riddance.
  - _9MOTHER9HORSE 10y ago
    As the parent comment mentions, QlikView is now the previous generation product, and Qlik Sense is where they are moving towards. Qlik Sense is pretty snappy, has much improved UX, etc. Qlik are top-right quadrant for BI tools, on a par with Tableau.
    - silverfighter 10y ago
      Reference to the Gartner Magic Quadrants report: https://www.gartner.com/doc/reprints?id=1-2Y77IIA&ct=160208&st=sb https://www.gartner.com/doc/reprints?id=1-2Y77IIA&ct=160208&...
    - chris_wot 10y ago
mathattack 10y ago
Interesting on a lot of levels. One is that they quote it as being a 40% premium to when a hedge fund bought a stake supporting a sale, but only a few percent above today's close. This suggests that the market was betting on a sale at around this place. (Compare to Marketo, which sold at well above the market value) Another interesting piece is that Qlik had a massive drop (~30%) in Q1 revenues versus Q4. [0] Enterprise software sales is seasonal, but this was pretty extreme. Another interesting piece is their SG&A is very close to their revenue, and dwarfs R&D. This suggests that Sales and Support is what's going to get the big axe. [0] https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AQLIK&fstype=ii&ei=IdVQV_naKMqxiwKiyby4CA https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AQLIK&fstype=ii&ei=...
- chris_wot 10y ago
  I can't say their support was great. Their server version seems to be full of security holes, I'm sure there are zero days circulating they don't know about.
- sjbase 10y ago
  As far as the "40% premium" goes: > This price represents a premium of 40% to the Company’s unaffected 10 day average stock price prior to March 3, 2016 of $21.83 Basically they took at 10-day average around a (somewhat) arbitrary date to price the stock for that 40% number. "Somewhat" because that date was when Eliott Management, an activist investor fund, bought a giant chunk of Qlik. That signaled a likely upcoming acquisition (which, as you said, the market was betting on). Thoma probably argues that signal moved the stock above it's "true" price. The counterargument would be a defense of the efficient markets hypothesis: that the true price isn't about signals and technicals, it's just what someone is willing to pay.
  - mathattack 10y ago
    I would think that Elliott's acquisition was that an acquisition might happen - what surprised me was that the price barely moved after that. Usually there's some kind of bidding war at the end. Or a chance that the acquisition falls through for a while. (Look at how long it took for Yahoo to finally get moving that way) It's rare that the early information hits a bullseye 3 months later.

87 points by dgudkov 10y ago

What is this, and why is this on the front page of HN? Are either Qlik or Thoma Bravo companies that I should know about?

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
parasubvert 10y ago
Qlik is one of the major data visualization tools like Tableau. This is part of a trend of activist investors and/or private equity taking companies private because the Street has unrealistic expectations.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- mark_integerdsv 10y ago
  Interesting, could you point to some other examples or otherwise expand a bit on this please? I work in the field and I'm currently looking at choosing software, this info might be very important in these decisions.
elgabogringo 10y ago
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=qlik http://lmgtfy.com/?q=qlik
- quadrature 10y ago
  I think they mean it more in the context of why its relevant to HN. usually we only talk about acquisitions of YC companies.
  - qq66 10y ago
    It's relevant because it's a $3b sale of a data visualization software company, which is more than any YC acquisition and bigger than all but a handful of YC companies.
    - genericpseudo 10y ago
      And it's a public-to-private transaction, not a takeover.
      - ledude 10y ago
        "In business, a takeover is the purchase of one company (the target) by another (the acquirer, or bidder). In the UK, the term refers to the acquisition of a public company whose shares are listed on a stock exchange, in contrast to the acquisition of a private company." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takeover https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takeover http://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/takeover.asp http://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/takeover.asp
        genericpseudo 10y ago
        OK, but my meaning was hopefully clear. It's essentially a leveraged MBO.
  - untog 10y ago
    > usually we only talk about acquisitions of YC companies. That's objectively untrue.
_RPM 10y ago
All due respect, but i'm not sure it's a violation of the rules for a link about a company to be on the front page without you knowing who the company is.
- aaronbrethorst 10y ago
  It's not. I was looking for context beyond what a press release could provide. All due respect.
jacquesm 10y ago
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/thoma-bravo https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/thoma-bravo https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/qliktech#/entity https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/qliktech#/entity
cthulhu-bot 10y ago
Thoma Bravo is and let me tell you why. The last company I worked at went through an acquisition with Thoma Bravo and the very next day after acquisition was confirmed we walked into the office and there were security guards in suits with ear pieces patrolling the office. At 9am they locked half of us in conference rooms and told us that everyone who wasn't in a conference room was getting laid off. We weren't allowed to leave the conference rooms for an hour out of "respect" for everyone gathering their stuff into boxes and they said that the security was there for "our safety". Thoma Bravo is currently bleeding that company dry and running it on a skeleton crew while it slowly circles the drain. This experience has made me super wary of private equity firms in general but this company in particular.
- chris_wot 10y ago
  That's terrible!
- pinewurst 10y ago
  Attachmate which owns SUSE Linux is another one of Thoma Bravo's creatures btw
- aaronbrethorst 10y ago
  Awesome, thank you.
- jacquesm 10y ago
  I guess we will know in 24 hours what happens with Qlik then.
- frik 10y ago
  I guess Compuware, Detroit / Dynatrace. Or Riverbed. Having several similar products ... you know what it means: https://thomabravo.com/portfolio/all/current/ https://thomabravo.com/portfolio/all/current/
  - cthulhu-bot 10y ago
    Several similar products indeed. Since I was at none of the above it seems they have a track record now and people should know what to expect.
chris_wot 10y ago
Never heard of Thoma Bravo, but I suggest that if you have any interest in BI tools that you at least learn who Qlik are.

rshm 10y ago

I am unaware about the current situation, but two years back qlick related jobs used to be a high paying and in-demand.

chris_wot 10y ago
They still are!

askafriend 10y ago

I'm hearing both names for the first time, which is quite surprising in the context of a $3B acquisition.

dopamean 10y ago
Is it really? The world is a big place with very many multibillion dollar companies. I'd be surprised if most people could name more than 10% of them.
- gelatocar 10y ago
  Naming and hearing of are very different things.

dgudkov 10y ago

I've been following Qlik and their competition with Tableau for quite a while. Qlik is a bigger and older company than Tableau. It's more focused on the technical side of data analysis rather than on UI/UX (Tableau does the opposite). They reached the point where their old product (QlikView) has accumulated too much technical debt so they don't develop it actively anymore. But their new product (Qlik Sense) is not ready for prime time yet (again because of shortcomings in UI/UX), even though it's very ambitious as it's basically a development platform (think Meteor for analytical apps). It seems like going private would give the company management more freedom to make bold decisions. Staying public meant having extra pressure from public investors which are typically short-term-minded. All in all it's probably a good move for Qlik.

jackmaney 10y ago
About three years ago, I was at a place that used Qlikview, and it was the worst software I've ever used in my life. It's technically able to handle larger datasets than Excel, but it's much slower than Excel at any kind of analysis or aggregation, it doesn't make use of SQL (even though the data it handles is tabular...instead, it uses a home-brewed, mangled, and inferior query language), and its visualizations and UI are sub-par compared to Tableau. Good riddance.
- _9MOTHER9HORSE 10y ago
  As the parent comment mentions, QlikView is now the previous generation product, and Qlik Sense is where they are moving towards. Qlik Sense is pretty snappy, has much improved UX, etc. Qlik are top-right quadrant for BI tools, on a par with Tableau.
  - silverfighter 10y ago
    Reference to the Gartner Magic Quadrants report: https://www.gartner.com/doc/reprints?id=1-2Y77IIA&ct=160208&st=sb https://www.gartner.com/doc/reprints?id=1-2Y77IIA&ct=160208&...
  - chris_wot 10y ago

mathattack 10y ago

Interesting on a lot of levels. One is that they quote it as being a 40% premium to when a hedge fund bought a stake supporting a sale, but only a few percent above today's close. This suggests that the market was betting on a sale at around this place. (Compare to Marketo, which sold at well above the market value) Another interesting piece is that Qlik had a massive drop (~30%) in Q1 revenues versus Q4. [0] Enterprise software sales is seasonal, but this was pretty extreme. Another interesting piece is their SG&A is very close to their revenue, and dwarfs R&D. This suggests that Sales and Support is what's going to get the big axe. [0] https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AQLIK&fstype=ii&ei=IdVQV_naKMqxiwKiyby4CA https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AQLIK&fstype=ii&ei=...

chris_wot 10y ago
I can't say their support was great. Their server version seems to be full of security holes, I'm sure there are zero days circulating they don't know about.
sjbase 10y ago
As far as the "40% premium" goes: > This price represents a premium of 40% to the Company’s unaffected 10 day average stock price prior to March 3, 2016 of $21.83 Basically they took at 10-day average around a (somewhat) arbitrary date to price the stock for that 40% number. "Somewhat" because that date was when Eliott Management, an activist investor fund, bought a giant chunk of Qlik. That signaled a likely upcoming acquisition (which, as you said, the market was betting on). Thoma probably argues that signal moved the stock above it's "true" price. The counterargument would be a defense of the efficient markets hypothesis: that the true price isn't about signals and technicals, it's just what someone is willing to pay.
- mathattack 10y ago
  I would think that Elliott's acquisition was that an acquisition might happen - what surprised me was that the price barely moved after that. Usually there's some kind of bidding war at the end. Or a chance that the acquisition falls through for a while. (Look at how long it took for Yahoo to finally get moving that way) It's rare that the early information hits a bullseye 3 months later.