Thoma Bravo acquires Coupa in USD 8 bln deal

The all-cash transaction will make Coupa a privately held company and is expected to close in the first half of 2023.

Thoma Bravo's acquisition of Coupa Software is being financed partly by a group of 19 direct lenders led by Sixth Street that is providing a USD 2.6 billion loan package. Other direct lenders on the deal include HPS Investment Partners, Oaktree Capital Management, Apollo Global Management and Blackstone.

Coupa was founded in 2006 to offer businesses spend management solutions that help them view and control their indirect spending. Some of the company’s business spend management tools include e-invoicing, travel, and expense management, spend analysis, treasury management, and more.

This follows the rumours that private equity firm Vista Equity Partners planned to purchase Coupa. Vista Equity Partners is not only a well-known investor in the fintech space, it has also made a handful of large acquisitions in the fintech space in the past few years, having acquired tax compliance firm Avalara earlier in 2022 and cloud identity solutions provider Ping Identity in 2016.

Thoma Bravo’s acquisitions

Interestingly enough, Thoma Bravo acquired Ping Identity earlier in 2022 for USD 2.8 billion after Vista Equity Partners exited its investment in the company. Thoma Bravo takes a buy-and-build approach in which it acquires similar companies and consolidates them to create synergies and develop companies with greater scale, scope, and broader service offerings.

Among Thoma Bravo’s other investments in the fintech space are Bottomline Technologies, Digital Insight, SailPoint, Ellie Mae, and Kofax.

Thoma Bravo has been one of the groups of private equity (PE) firms that has been scooping up tech companies in recent months capitalising on the current climate. Companies that are targets have included those that have been struggling to perform well in the public markets, those finding it a challenge to scale and raise money in later-stage rounds, and those that had been planning to go public but have not been able to due to market conditions and the general cool state of the IPO market.