Vista Equity Partners Snaps Cloud Platform Pluralsight In $3.5B All-Cash Deal

Private-equity firm Vista Equity Partners has acquired online education-software platform Pluralsight Inc PS in an all-cash transaction for $20.26 per share, the companies announced on Sunday.

What Happened: Vista has agreed to pay $3.5 billion to acquire all outstanding shares of Pluralsight, including debt. The purchase price represents a roughly 25% premium to the company's volume-weighted average closing stock price for the 30 trading days before Sunday's announcement, Pluralsight said in the statement.

The purchase price of $20.26 represents a premium of 6.7% over Friday's closing price of $18.98.

"We are confident that this transaction is the best path forward for Pluralsight and our stakeholders," said Gary Crittenden, Pluralsight's lead independent director.

Why It Matters: Utah-based Pluralsight is a cloud-based online-education platform for software developers with enterprise and individual customers. 

Pluralsight's stock had fallen 12% after reporting the third-quarter earnings due to decelerating revenue and billings growth. Last week, JP Morgan had downgraded Pluralsight to "underweight" with a $20 price target.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Vista is a pioneer in software investing and manages more than $73 billion in assets.

Vista was already focused on business-software providers with recurring-revenue models even before the pandemic. The pandemic has increased interest in companies that make it easier to reach employees and students remotely, WSJ notes.

Over the last month, Vista has taken a majority stake in customer-relations-software company Gainsight Inc and a majority investment in another customer-relations-management software maker, Pipedrive. 

Price Action: PS shares closed 0.37% higher at $18.98 on Friday.

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