One of top players in the event technology sector may be taken over by a private equity firm for more than US$4 billion. Photo Credit: Cvent
Event-tech giant Cvent is exploring the possibility of becoming a
private company once again, according to unnamed sources in an article
published by the Wall Street Journal.
The possible sale could value the technology supplier at more than
US$4 billion, the story says, and has attracted interest from multiple
private-equity firms, Blackstone among them.
The event-technology market is in a state of flux thanks to a
precipitous drop in demand for virtual-event platforms. Although Cvent
has been a major market force since well before the pandemic, before the
WSJ published the report the company's shares had lost nearly half
their value from an early 2021 high, according to the newspaper.
Shares closed nearly 23% on 31 January after the WSJ report,
according to Reuters. Share price has dropped a bit over the ensuing two
days but still remains well above what it was before the WSJ article
came out.
Cvent has been navigating transitions between publicly traded and a
privately held company for some time. The company went private in 2016
thanks to a US$1.65 billion acquisition by Vista Equity Partners, after
drawing government scrutiny over potential competition concerns
Vista already owned Cvent competitor Lanyon, and the acquisition saw
Lanyon's platform absorbed into the Cvent ecosystem. The US Department
of Justice gave the deal the green light in November 2016.
Some five years later, riding high on the pandemic-era success of its
virtual- and hybrid-event technology retooling, Cvent reentered public
trading in December 2021 through a special acquisition deal with
Dragoneer Investment Group. Vista still owned roughly an 80% stake in
Cvent as of March 2022, according to the WSJ.
Many of Cvent's event-technology competitors, including Bizzabo,
Hopin and Hubilo, among others, have laid off significant percentages of
their respective work forces in recent months as they restructured to
adjust to the change in demand.
Likewise,
recent layoffs have been announced at major technology players such as
Salesforce, Google parent Alphabet and Microsoft, all of whom had
previously been mentioned by analysts and pundits as potential suitors
in event-technology acquisitions.
A Cvent spokesperson said only that the company does not comment on market rumors or speculation.
Source: Northstar Meetings Group