Thoma Bravo Completes Acquisition of Elemica

Thoma Bravo Completes Acquisition of Elemica

New Investor Partnership Accelerates Time to Market for Next-Gen Supply Chain Solutions

Jul 07, 2016, 10:00 ET from Thoma Bravo

SAN FRANCISCO and WAYNE, Pa., July 7, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Thoma Bravo, LLC, a leading private equity investment firm, and Elemica, the leading Supply Chain Operating Network for the process industries, announce the completion of their merger agreement. As new owners of Elemica, Thoma Bravo's software and technology expertise perfectly complements the supply chain and business network expertise of Elemica, enabling the company to expand their solution portfolio and accelerate the time to market for new products.

"We admire what Elemica's experienced team has created and achieved with their patented business network, saving companies billions," said A.J. Rohde, Partner at Thoma Bravo. "Elemica is the clear leader in the global industrial manufacturing community, and we wanted to partner with this world-class organization to help further transform the supply chains of their customers."

"Today begins a new chapter in the Elemica story, allowing us to focus our execution on our long-term strategy of building the most robust next-generation supply chain network," said John Blyzinskyj, CEO of Elemica. "The resources and flexibility provided by this acquisition makes us very excited about the opportunities that lie ahead."

The new investor partnership will accelerate the company's time to market for creating leading-edge solutions that give customers better business outcomes with more streamlined operations and a competitive advantage. Elemica is now poised to help clients sustain growth and profitability with more robust solutions that connect trading partners for improved collaboration and quicker return on investment.

Kirkland & Ellis served as legal advisor to Thoma Bravo. Houlihan Lokey served as financial advisor and Pepper Hamilton served as legal advisor to Elemica.

About Thoma Bravo, LLC
Thoma Bravo is a leading private equity investment firm building on a 30+ year history of providing equity and strategic support to experienced management teams and growing companies. The firm seeks to create value by collaborating with company management to improve business operations and provide capital to support growth initiatives. Thoma Bravo invests with a particular focus on application and infrastructure software and technology enabled services. The firm currently manages a series of private equity funds representing more than $12 billion of equity commitments. For more information, visit www.thomabravo.com.

About Elemica
Elemica is the leading Supply Chain Operating Network for the process industries. Elemica transforms supply chains by replacing manual and complex approaches with efficient and reliable ones. Launched in 2000, customers like Arkema, BASF, Continental, The Dow Chemical Company, The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, Michelin, and Shell, and more process nearly $400B in commerce value annually on the network. Elemica drives bottom line results by promoting reduced cost of operations, faster process execution, automation of key business processes, removal of transactional barriers, and seamless information flow between trading partners. For more information, visit www.elemica.com.

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Lux Research: Is GE too dependent on ThingWorx? (Update: GE partners with Microsoft on cloud services for Predix)

Tom Paine

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Update 6/11: GE Partners with Microsoft on Azure Cloud for Predix.

Fortune has an item this morning about a report by an outfit named Lux Research knocking GE's IoT software strategy and questioning the market readiness of its Predix software.

I have no firm basis for either dismissing or accepting Lux' conclusions. But I have often rolled my eyes at GE's projections for Predix. Perhaps much like IBM's Watson, GE is trying soften up the turf ahead with a heavy dose of PR artillery.

What's interesting is that report acknowledges and questions GE's dependence on PTC (primarily ThingWorx) for its go to market IoT platform.

"Predix is not as fully developed as GE represents it to be, has minimal market penetration, and has not been battle-tested at scale," said Isaac Brown, Lux Research Analyst and lead author of the report titled, "A Tale of Two IoT Titans: The Curious Case of the GE-PTC Partnership," in a statement.

"In contrast, the PTC solution has millions of connected devices across hundreds of scale customers", Brown added.

GE responded, saying claims in the report “are not based on fact or objective research,” and contain “numerous factual errors.”



It seems to me that if GE decides that the ThingWorx IoT platform is suitable for a longer term relationship, then the acquisition of all or part of PTC (NASDAQ:PTC) might be in order. PTC, which made its name by selling CAD/CAM software on workstations back when that was a novel concept, has declining revenue, and IoT constitutes only a small portion of that. But PTC has a market capitalization of only $4.3 billion, and GE could swallow it like a minnow if it wanted to. ThingWorx is headquartered in Boston now, closer to both GE and PTC.