Philly Tech News Three big deals: Veeva prices IPO; Accenture buys Procurian; Comcast buys Universal City tower

Tom Paine

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California-based Veeva Systems, which has a significant presence in the Philadelphia area, indicated its pricing range for its planned IPO in a regulatory filing.

The company and existing shareholders are offering 13 million shares at $12 to $14 each, which could raise as much as $183 million. At the midpoint of that range, Veeva would be valued at about $1.6 billion. The price range and number of shares is not final and can be adjusted as the offering date approaches. No word on when it might be scheduled yet.

Veeva is a SaaS life sciences vendor that started with CRM, but appears to be taking broader aim at the large vertical market, with Oracle its primary competitor. It has offices in Radnor and Fort Washington. I've written about the planned offering here and also here.



Accenture, already a leading force in the third-party procurement space, today announced plans to acquire another leader, King of Prussia-based Procurian, for $375 million.

Procurian, mostly owned by Wayne-based ICG, was considered by many to be best-of-breed among procurement outsourcing vendors. Founded in 1999 as ICG Commerce near the height of the VerticalNet bubble (ICG was also an investor in that company), it changed its name to Procurian in early 2012. I'm not an expert on its history, but my recollection is that it struggled for a while before honing in on a strategy that clicked. ICG gradually bought out most other investors, including Cross Atlantic Capital Partners.

Spend Matters, an authoritative website covering the procurement industry, provides more insight into the deal and says it establishes a benchmark price for top companies in that sector of about 3x revenue, which presumably would put Procurian's revenue at roughly $125 million.

In its own statement, ICG said it expected to realize approximately $324 million from the transaction and that it (ICG) will emerge "as a high-growth, pure-play cloud computing company, with market-leading positions in the public sector, compliance and insurance markets."

Procurian has approximately 780 employees and all are expected to join Accenture, the acquiring company says.

Universal City Plaza (Wikipedia)

Does Comcast have an edifice complex, or does it simply prefer buying to leasing? Comcast is buying the 35 story Universal City Plaza, the tallest building in the Valley, for a reported $420 million. NBCU is already the majority tenant there, but according to one source the building is almost 30% vacant. Earlier this year Comcast purchased a big part of 30 Rock, and there has also been seemingly well-grounded speculation that it is looking at building one or more additional towers in Center City.