Activist Anson Funds may have spotted a huge opportunity for value in Five9
Summary
The company serves customers in a range of industries, including banking and financial services, business process outsourcers, retail, health care, technology and education. While not historically activists, in October 2023, Anson hired Sagar Gupta (former senior analyst and head of technology, media and telecommunications investing at Legion Partners) to build out the firms activism strategy. The company is a leader in the space and the only pure-play cloud contact center provider with peers InContact and Genesys, which are respectively owned by Nice and Permira. While this could lead to a more robust sales process, as the last remaining pure-play cloud-based contact center, there are a handful of potential acquirers, all strategic: ServiceNow, Salesforce and Zoom. Despite reportedly trying to buy the company twice before, at significantly higher prices, Zoom has made no secret of its goal to use its $7.4 billion of net cash for an acquisition and has specifically mentioned a contact center.