Apttus acquired by private equity firm Thoma Bravo

Apttus cofounder Kirk
Krappe abruptly left his role as CEO on July 2. Now Apttus has a
new majority owner.
Apttus

• Two months after its founding CEO mysteriously left the
  company, Apttus has a new majority owner.
• The private equity firm Thoma Bravo, which also owns
  the cloud security company Barracuda Networks, announced its
  majority acquisition of Apttus on Tuesday. The terms of the
  deal were not disclosed.
• Apttus, which was last valued at $1.86 billion,
  previously said it would IPO in 2017.
• But the company never made it to Wall Street.

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Two months after Apttus’s founding CEO Kirk Krappe mysteriously
exited the company, the sales software startup has a new majority
owner.

On Tuesday, the software-heavy private equity firm Thoma Bravo

announced that it acquired a majority stake in
Apttus. The companies didn’t disclosed the terms of the
deal.

David Murphy
, former president and COO of Blue
Coat Systems and a partner at Thoma Bravo, will take over as
executive chairman at Apttus, a role left in flux since Krappe’s
abrupt departure on July 2.

Krappe, who co-founded the company in 2006, was replaced by a
newly created “office
of the CEO,” which it said would run the company until
it could find a new CEO. Krappe didn’t respond to a request for
comment and Apttus declined to comment on the circumstances of
his departure.

“What we can say is that Apttus views this development positively
and believes Thoma Bravo can instill greater operational
excellence, strengthen our market leadership and allow us to
continue providing indispensable value to our customers,” an
Apttus spokesman said of the acquisition. 

Majority acquisition comes after missed IPO promises 

Apttus sells “quote-to-cash” software which integrates with
customer relationship management programs like Salesforce to
automate the contract and payment process. 

The company was last valued at $1.86 billion in 2017, according
to PitchBook, after raising $55 million led by the private equity
firm Premji Invest, with participation from existing
investors at Salesforce Ventures, K1, IBM Ventures and Iconiq
Capital. 

Krappe told
MarketWatch in 2016 that the company intended to go public in
2017, under then-chief financial offer Sydney Carey. In
December 2017, however, Carey was replaced as CFO by Terry
Schmid. Schmid previously worked as CFO at Imperva,
which he took took public in 2011. 

In October 2017,
Bloomberg reported that Apttus hired Goldman Sachs to manage
the offering.

It’s unclear whether Apttus intends to pursue an IPO under its
new ownership structure, but that route isn’t common when it
comes to private equity owners. Typically, private equity firms
like Thoma Bravo buy companies like Apttus in order to sell them
down the road at a premium. 

In February, Thoma Bravo
acquired the cloud security company Barracuda Networks for
$1.6 billion. In April 2017, it
acquired a minority stake in the security software company
McAfee, which was previously part of Intel.

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