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The shares of Stamps.com surged on Friday.
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Stamps.com
After Thoma Bravo agreed to buy the e-commerce shipping business for $6.6 billion, the stock skyrocketed by more than 60% on Friday. Stamps.com (ticker: STMP) is being acquired by Thoma Bravo, a Chicago-based buyout firm, for $330 a share, a nearly 67 percent premium to the company’s Thursday closing share price of $197.72. The board of directors of Stamps.com has approved the deal that would see the company become a private corporation.
The deal is scheduled to finalize in the third quarter, pending usual closing conditions and Stamps.com stockholder approval. In a statement, Ken McBride, Chairman and CEO of Stamps.com, said, “Today’s announcement marks a significant milestone in the history of Stamps.com and will provide us with a new and exciting platform from which we can continue to execute our global strategy driven by best-in-class software and technology solutions.” Stamps.com has been providing Internet mailing and shipping options since 1996. The company, based in El Segundo, California, is a USPS-approved licensed vendor. Customers can print USPS postage for domestic and international shipment, which includes consumers, small businesses, and major corporations. According to the company’s website, individual customers pay $17.99 a month and can ship things from anywhere as long as they have a ZIP Code. The sale to Thoma Bravo comes with a 40-day go-shop period that ends on August 18. This clause authorizes Stamps.com’s board of directors and advisors to aggressively seek out and consider takeover offers from outside parties. Go-shops, on the other hand, almost never result in a higher bid, owing to the parties’ lack of time to do due diligence.
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Thoma Bravo, a software investor with a track record of huge purchases, has made its newest acquisition. Thoma bought cybersecurity firm Proofpoint for $12.3 billion in April. In the same month, the private equity group finalized the $10.2 billion acquisition of RealPage, a real estate software company. When Thoma Bravo sold Ellie Mae to the New York Times in 2020, it delivered one of the most significant exits.
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for the sum of $11 billion According to Barron’s, the firm made four times its money in less than two years. In a statement, Holden Spaht, a Thoma Bravo managing partner, stated, “As the first firm to launch online postage and an early inventor in e-commerce shipping software, Stamps.com has established itself as a vital technology solution in worldwide e-commerce.” To contact the editors at Barron’s, send an email to editors@barrons.com./n
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