Experience management company Qualtrics will become a private company again.
Silver Lake plans to buy the company in a $12.5 billion deal that includes Canada’s largest pension fund. The sale represents a 73% premium on Qualtrics’ stock price as of Jan. 25. Silver Lake already owns more than 4% of the company.
The all-cash deal, announced late Sunday, comes after global M&A transactions fell in 2022 amid rising interest rates.
SAP acquired Qualtrics for $8 billion in 2019. It spun out of SAP two years later and raised $1.55 billion in an IPO.
As part of its earnings call in January, SAP said it was laying off 2.5% of its workforce and planned to explore a sale of Qualtrics.
Founded in 2002, Qualtrics will retain its co-headquarters in Provo, Utah, and Seattle, where it employs about 1,000 people.
Qualtrics’ downtown Seattle tower was renamed Qualtrics Tower in 2019 when the company leased 275,000 square feet across 13 stories in the building.
There will be no immediate impact to the company’s footprint or headcount in Seattle as a result of the deal, a spokesperson said. Qualtrics operates 28 offices globally.
The company will continue to be led by CEO Zig Serafin, a former Microsoft executive.
Qualtrics has nearly 20,000 businesses that use its platform to collect data on how customers, employees and others experience their products and services. It reported 2022 revenue of $1.4 billion, up 36% year-over-year.
In 2021 it acquired Usermind, a Seattle marketing startup that helps companies acquire, retain, and service customers.
Silver Lake, founded in 1999, has more than $92 billion in combined assets under management. It is well known for taking Dell private in 2013.
