Thoma Bravo’s Apttus to Acquire Rival Conga in $715 Million Deal

(Bloomberg) -- Apttus Corp., a company that makes software for managing work processes, agreed to acquire rival Conga, which has developed document-generation applications for customers including Salesforce.com Inc., according to a statement Thursday.

Apttus, backed by private equity firm Thoma Bravo, is paying $715 million for a majority stake in Conga, according to a person with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. The deal is expected to be announced Thursday, the person said.

Thoma Bravo will be lead investor in the combined company, according to the statement. Insight Partners, Conga’s majority shareholder, will retain a material stake. Nikitas Koutoupes, managing director at Insight Partners, will join the board of directors.

The coronavirus pandemic has tested companies’ remote working capacity and accelerated their use of technology. Enterprise software companies are among the sectors least affected by the lockdown, and in some instances have benefited from it.

Representatives for Apttus, based in San Mateo, California, and Conga declined to comment on the transaction details.

Conga, founded in 2006, is the developer of Conga Suite, a Salesforce application. It is also backed by Salesforce Ventures.

Frank Holland, Apttus’s chief executive officer, will be CEO of the combined company, which will operate under the Conga brand, according to the statement. Matthew Schiltz, CEO of Conga, will join the company’s board of managers.

The two firms had discussed joining forces last year, Holland said in an interview.

“We had competed for many years,” he said. “For enterprise customers, there is a sense of using this pandemic as a way of forcing function to improve their commercial operations.”

The combined company will have about $400 million in revenue spread across a product portfolio that includes applications for pricing, contract management, document generation, process automation and e-signature.

The companies have more than 10,000 enterprise and mid-market customers, according to the statement.

Apttus, which has also teamed up with Salesforce, provides so-called middle office software used for pricing and contract management. It was acquired by Thoma Bravo in 2018.

Deutsche Bank AG advised Apptus and is providing financing for the deal. Kirkland & Ellis is Apptus’s legal adviser. Conga’s advisers are Qatalyst Partners and Willkie Farr & Gallagher.

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