Sarah Sanders not welcome in public place in Virginia
Last night I was told by the owner of Red Hen in Lexington, VA to leave because I work for @POTUS and I politely left. Her actions say far more about her than about me. I always do my best to treat people, including those I disagree with, respectfully and will continue to do so
— Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) June 23, 2018
PhillyTechNews Daily Page 6/22: Plymouth Meeting-based CRF Health on the block, WSJ reports
Plymouth Meeting-based CRF Health is on the block, the Wall Street Journal reports .
CRF Health makes or supplies electronic assessment technology (EDC) used in clinical trials. Founded in 2000, CRF also has offices in the UK, Finland and Poland. It has 609 employees listed on LinkedIn, of which about 180 are in the Philadelphia area. Timo Ahopelto, Jarkko Joki-Tokola and Jaakko Ollila are the founders, though they do not appear to be active in the business now. Technically, its headquarters is in Finland.
CRF has had a string of PE owners before being acquired by the European PE firm Vitruvian Partners in January 2015. CRF has reportedly hired Jeffries to pursue the sale. It generates EBITDA of €40 million ($46.3 million), the Journal said. My guess is that it would fetch a few hundred million.
Vitruvian also owns Phlexglobal, a UK-based electronic clinical trial master file vendor with offices in Malvern, but that business, which Vitruvian's website states has sales of €25 million ($29 million), is not involved in the sale. Vitruvian Partners' website says CRF has sales of €100 ($117 million) .
The question is, will the buyer be strategic or financial?
The market is not set in stone, but rather is still experiencing considerable change. For instance, Veeva Systems (VEEV) recently entered the market with its own proprietary EDC offering.
june22 - Curated tweets by phillytechnews a class="twitter-timeline" data-partner="tweetdeck" href="https://twitter.com/phillytechnews/timelines/1010115984269676544?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">june22 - Curated tweets by phillytechnews
ThingWorx parent PTC partners with Rockwell Automation ($ attached); Bulotta back in corporate fold at Microsoft
Tom Paine
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After seemingly getting close to GE, which is obviously dealing with its own share of problems lately, over the past few years, ThingWorx parent PTC found a new strategic partner last week; Rockwell Automation , which invested $1 billion in PTC for less than 1/10th ownership. And starting Monday, PTC will hold its annual IoT-oriented LiveWorx conference in Boston that is expected to attract about 6,000 attendees.
Where this will leave ThingWorx as a brand name and organization is hard to say; its center of gravity has been gradually moving north for some time, and now only 40 ThingWorx employees are still in Pennsylvania per LinkedIn.
PTC was a shrinking CAD/CAM software firm ( originally Parametric Technologies ) left over from the 1980s when it bought ThingWorx at the end of 2013 for $100 million plus. PTC's share price has more than doubled since then, perhaps more of a result of PTC's growing mindshare of industrial IoT rather than actual results. PTC is moving its headquarters from suburban Needham to Boston.
The Boston Globe has a piece on PTC's rebirth ( "How Boston software maker PTC came back from the brink") .
In related news, ThingWorx cofounder Rick Bulotta, who has been mostly freelancing since leaving PTC, has shown up in a new uniform: Microsoft's (H/T Technical.ly Philly). Microsoft has partnered with PTC in a number of IoT initiatives.
Its a small world.
Avalara has great IPO; is King of Prussia's Vertex keeping pace?
Tom Paine
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Seattle-based Avalara began trading yesterday following its IPO, and the offering was quite successful for the tax software company. Shares closed up 87 percent at $44.94 after opening at $35. Shares were priced at $24 in the company's $180 million IPO on Thursday. It ended up with a market capitalization in excess of $2 billion.
Revenue in 2017 climbed 27 percent to $213.2 million, though Avalara continued to lose money - $64 million.
Much like subscription billing services such as Zuora, Avatar depends heavily upon transactions, particularly in the rising digital economy. Avalara see its current US TAM (total addressable market) as being in excess of $8 billion.
Avalara CEO Scott McFarlane, who co-founded the company in 2004, told CNBC's "Squawk Alley" on Friday that in the next seven to 12 years, sales tax will have to be entirely automated.
Avalara CEO: We want to be a part of every internet transaction from CNBC.
The last revenue figure I've seen for Vertex was "in excess of $200 million", according to then-CEO Jeff Westphal two years ago. Vertex has 1,000 employees on LinkedIn; Avalatra has more than 1400 employees. These two aren't alone in the market; a Thomson Reuters unit, OneSource, and CCH are also players.
My sense of the matter is that Avalatra has been aggressive in attacking the boundaries in the enterprise tax software market, while Vertex had been more cautious. Vertex may have some catching up to do in the enterprise and international markets where Aavalara is strong.
Vertex had made some significant changes in recent years. Headquarters has moved from Berwyn to King of Prussia; Jeff Westphal turned over the CEO job to David DeStefano; it shuttered an income tax prep business in Florida; and expanded its Cloud Platform and capabilities.
Whether Vertex can or needs to go public in the near future is something I don't know; but the controlling Westphal family may need to expand or alter its capital structure to compete in an amped up market, perhaps yielding some control. Another outside possibility is hooking up with a company like Zuora.
One other point I found interesting: Vertex has a close relationship with Oracle , and Vertex' cloud is powered by Oracle.
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