SAP snags CallidusCloud for $2.4 billion

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Industry News

SAP, the German enterprise software giant, announced it acquired CallidusCloud last night for $2.4 billion or $36 per share. Callidus provides configure price quote (CPQ) and sales performance management tools delivered as a cloud service.

The share price is a nice bump for shareholders, representing a 21 percent premium over the 30-day volume weighted average share price, according to SAP.

The company, which was founded in 1996 and went public in 2003, gives SAP an assortment of sales tools you typically expect from Salesforce, Oracle or Microsoft. The set of products is aimed at managing company sales teams from lead through proposal to contract to commission or payment.

It’s interesting to note that the company distributes some of its solutions on the Salesforce AppExchange and has built solutions with Salesforce Lightning, the company’s development platform.

SAP, which has traditionally handled the back office management of some the biggest companies in the world is moving further into the front office with this deal where sales happens. “The addition of CallidusCloud aligns perfectly to SAP’s innovation strategy to transform the front office. SAP gives CallidusCloud the global scale to accelerate its already impressive growth,” SAP CEO Bill McDermott said in a statement.

For Callidus, it provides a big exit for shareholders and a huge platform to continue to grow its company, but what happens to its customers is always an open question in these kinds of deals. The company has been operating for more than 20 years and now it’s going to be subsumed by a much larger company in SAP.

The CallidusCloud products could possibly work in tandem with other front office tools SAP has acquired in recent years like Hybris, the eCommerce company it bought in 2013 and Gigya, the identity management company it acquired last year for $350 million.

Callidus has itself been quite acquisitive, acquiring 14 companies dating back to 2010 including 4 in 2017 alone, according to data on Crunchbase. Today’s transaction is expected to close sometime during the second quarter, assuming it passes all regulatory muster.