Cloud-based software company Salesforce.com has decided to acquire big data/visualization software firm Tableau Software for around $15.3 billion, as announced on Monday.
As part of the all-stock deal, Tableau shareholders would receive 1.103 shares of Salesforce, which represents an offer of around $177.88 per share - a 42% premium on Tableau’s Friday closing price.
If the deal goes through, it would mark Salesforce’s largest acquisition till date. In 2018, it bought software maker MuleSoft for $5.9 billion.
The news sent Tableau shares soaring more than +30% Monday. Salesforce shares lost more than -4%.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff indicated that he is hopeful about the strong impact resulting from the coming together of the two companies specializing in customer relationship management and data analytics respectively.
According to the companies, the merger should immediately lead to an increase of between $300 million and $400 million in the combined group's sales.
The deal is expected to close in the third quarter, following which Tableau will operate independently.
Last month, Tableau reported quarterly net losses of -2 cents per share on an adjusted basis, on revenue of $282.5 million – compared to analysts’ estimates of a loss of a penny per share on revenue of $287.3 million. Salesforce, on the other hand, reported last Thursday its non-GAAP earnings of 93 cents per share for the three months ending in April, thereby beating the Street consensus expectation of 61 cents.
The news of the deal comes a week after Alphabet Inc.’s Google agreed to buy Looker Data Sciences Inc. for $2.6 billion, in what seems to be Google’s attempts at expanding into cloud-based data management.