May was another intense month for Boston tech's M&A scene. But it was also unique for a reason: in many cases, companies disclosed how much they paid to finalize their deals - and some of these numbers had multiple zeros in them.
Boston-based LogoMix, for example, was acquired in a $43 million all-cash transaction, while WordStream signed an acquisition agreement for $130 million in cash.
Not to mention, the big one. Elliott Management, a New York City-based fund manager, made a public proposal to acquire athenahealth for $6.4 billion, or $160 per share. The Watertown healthcare company is still "undertaking a thorough and deliberate analysis of Elliott Management's proposal," as it declared a week ago.
Also notably, again Microsoft went shopping for a Boston-area startup. After acquiring cybersecurity company Hexadite last year for a reported $100 million, the tech giant brought home a speech recognition startup based in Newton, Semantic Machines.
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Here are the BostInno Departed from May 2018:
The Shuttered:
• As far as we could tell, no startups shut down in May.
The Merged and Acquired:
• Deluxe Corporation acquired LogoMix, a Boston provider of logo design and other small business branding and marketing services, in a $43 million all-cash transaction.
• USA Today publisher Gannett Co. has reached an agreement to acquire Boston online advertising company WordStream for $130 million in cash “plus up to $20 million payable in 2019 and 2020 if certain revenue goals are met,” MarketWatch reported. The deal is expected to close in the second quarter.
• SmartBear, a Somerville-based provider of tools to develop, test and monitor software, has acquired Hiptest, a development platform for Agile and DevOps teams with offices in France and San Francisco.
• Microsoft acquired for an undisclosed amount Semantics Machines, a Newton, Mass.-based startup that builds artificially intelligent software for home automation devices and customer service for brands.
• Waltham, Mass.-based Building Engines, a software for managing commercial real estate, completed the acquisition of AwareManager, another property management software company, for an undisclosed amount.
• Cambridge-based fundraising software maker FrontStream was acquired by Los Angeles-based investment firm Marlin Equity Partners.
If you think there’s a startup missing from this list, email Lucy at lmaffei@americaninno.com
