SAP-owned Qualtrics to be sold to Silver Lake, CPP Investments for $12.5 billion

Customer Experience management company Qualtrics on Monday said private equity firm Silver Lake and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments) have agreed to buy the entire company for $12.5 billion in an all-cash transaction.  

CPP Investments, according to a joint statement, will pay $1.75 billion in equity and another $1 billion in debt for the deal.

US-based Silver Lake, which already owns 4% stake in the company, along with CPP Investments will acquire 100% of the outstanding shares in Qualtrics, including the entirety of ERP software provider SAP’s majority stake, the companies said.

“Qualtrics will become an independent, privately held company,” Qualtrics said, adding that it will continue to remain headquartered in Provo, Utah, and Seattle, Washington with CEO Zig Serafin at the helm.

SAP acquired a majority stake in Qualtrics in 2018 for $8 billion with the idea of marrying customer experience management with ERP software systems. By doing this amalgamation of real-time customer experience data with operational data, enterprises would be able to make adjustments to business strategies to perform better against their competition in their respective segments and domain.

In January this year, SAP shared its intent to divest its stake in Qualtrics but did not reveal the reason behind the divestment.

However, despite selling off its entire stake, SAP said it will continue to remain a technology and strategic partner with the company servicing joint customers.

The acquisition of Qualtrics by the investment firms, which is expected to close in the second half of 2023, will see SAP garner approximately $7.7 billion for its stake in Qualtrics, the ERP software provider said in a statement.

“Since we acquired Qualtrics in 2019 the company has more than tripled its revenue while delivering profitability,” Christian Klein, CEO and Member of the Executive Board of SAP SE said in a statement. “SAP intends to remain a close go-to-market and technology partner, servicing joint customers and continuing to contribute to Qualtrics’s success. The number of companies and brands using Qualtrics software has risen from 10,000 at the time of SAP’s purchase to over 18,000 today.”