SAP agrees to sell Qualtrics stake for $7.7B | TechTarget
Summary
The German enterprise software giant today agreed to sell its 423 million shares of Qualtrics to the private equity firm Silver Lake and the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board in an acquisition that totaled for $12.5 billion. "Silver Lake has both the operational expertise and the track record with software companies to help Qualtrics extend its leadership in the XM category it pioneered," said SAP CEO Christian Klein in a press release. But the sale price and the IPO mean that SAP at least recouped its initial investment and likely made some profit in the deal, according to Jon Reed, co-founder of Diginomica, an enterprise software analysis firm. Joshua Greenbaum, principal at Enterprise Applications Consulting, described the Qualtrics acquisition as an odd cultural fit from the start, ultimately proving to be a strategic distraction for SAP. Selling off Qualtrics likely means that SAP has thrown in the towel in the CX market, said Trevor White, vice president at Nucleus Research.
