Salesforce buys ExactTarget in a $2.5 billion deal
Cloud marketing platform Salesforce has announced its largest acquisition to date. As one of the biggest players in the CRM market today, it will buy all the outstanding shares in ExactTarget.
Because its acquisition strategy is focused on the cloud marketing space, this buyout appears to be a perfect fit. The deal has an estimated value of $2.5 billion.
Salesforce bought Buddy Media last year for $689 million and paid $340 million for social media tracker Radian6e.
Salesforce.com will pay $33.75 per share for Exact Target. That’s a more than 50% stock premium to ExactTarget’s Monday closing price of $22.10. The boards of both companies have unanimously approved the buyout, and it is expected to close by July 31.
The companies put the deal’s value at approximately $2.5 billion. According to FactSet, ExactTarget has about 69.3 million outstanding shares. The Indianapolis company’s stock jumped 53.3 percent in Tuesday pre-market trading. ExactTarget filed for its initial public offering with the stock market late 2011.
By combining ExactTarget’s digital marketing capabilities with Salesforce.com’s sales, service and social marketing solutions, Salesforce.com will create a new, even bigger “force” in the world of marketing platforms. In similar news, we saw Eloqua being bought by Oracle earlier this year, and Marketo went public on May 17, raising a total of $79 million with its IPO. More cross selling among both ET and SF clients is expected once the acquisition is final, as the press release stated: “The combination of ExactTarget and Salesforce.com will increase the value proposition that customers of both companies will receive.”