Unica Corp. recently announced that it will acquire Sane Solutions LLC, a Web analytics software maker.
Unica Corporation, a global provider of Enterprise Marketing Management (EMM) solutions, recently announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Sane Solutions, LLC.; a privately-held provider of web analytics solutions. The purchase price is estimated to be in the range of $26 million to $28 million, consisting of $22.8 million in cash, and the remainder in Unica common stock, assumed liabilities and transaction-related costs.
Unica went public a year ago and is now starting to spend some of that capital.
The move comes less than three months after Unica purchased MarketSoft, a maker of event detection and lead management software. Sane Solutions provides software to analyze customer online behavior and Web traffic. Its NetTracker product offers both hosted and on-premise deployment options based on an open architecture.
This acquisition is a key step towards delivering Unica’s vision for EMM, and is a game- changing event for the industry. said Yuchun Lee, co-founder and CEO of Unica. "Unica has a leadership position in the EMM market, and we believe that we are now the only company capable of delivering an end-to-end, cross-channel marketing solution.
Lee added, "According to a recent survey conducted by Forrester Research, 77% of marketers agree they need a more comprehensive application suite for marketing. This acquisition is an important part of fulfilling our customers’ needs, helping them achieve high-performance and accountability across brand, Internet and relationship marketing with a common, integrated suite."
The acquisition also provides Unica with a proven solution to win the market for web analytics and internet marketing. The addition of Sane Solutions’ powerful and business-oriented solutions will enable marketers to capture, analyse and act on cross-channel intelligence to deliver unprecedented levels of customer loyalty, profitability and operational efficiency.
"Overall, I think it is a very exciting and aggressive move on Unica’s part," said Elana Anderson, vice president and research director of the marketing strategy and technology group at Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research Inc.
Essentially, there are three core buyers of marketing technology, Anderson said: database marketing, where Unica has a strong presence; interactive marketing; and brand marketing.
Sane Solutions’ has more than 100 enterprise-class customers including American Honda Motor Co., Inc., Coca-Cola Company, CVS, GEICO Direct, NASA, and Old Mutual. NetTracker is available in English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish versions, further adding to its appeal to large, global organizations. Sane Solutions other products are the preferred choice of thousands of small and medium-sized businesses.
Unica’s acquisition of Sane Solutions reinforces powerful industry trends. According to Forrester Research, "65 percent of consumers research online and then purchase offline for a total of $1 billion in offline sales." In addition to tracking and analyzing customer behaviour, this multi-channel buying approach requires marketers to implement initiatives that deliver the right information to each customer via the right channels across the buying process. Integrating web analytics with the powerful cross-channel analytics, planning, resource management and execution capabilities of Unica’s Affinium Suite will allow marketers to integrate their web and other customer data.
Sane Solutions had 2005 revenues of approximately $6 million and is a leading provider of solutions for analyzing online customer behaviour and web traffic. Its flagship product, NetTracker, differs from other solutions with its open architecture, flexible data collection and reporting, and on-premise as well as hosted deployment models. In comparison, most web analytics providers rely on a proprietary data management approach. This limits the ability to track and report on the cross-channel behaviour of customers, and to fully close the loop on internet marketing investments. In addition, most web analytics vendors offer only a hosted model or an incompatible combination of hosted and on-premise solutions. This makes it harder for users to bring web analytics in-house as their needs change.
The purchase price for the acquisition is estimated to range between $26 million to $28 million, including $22.8 million in cash, 151,984 shares of Unica common stock (valued at $1.9M based on the March 6, 2006 closing price of $12.25 per share) which will be placed in escrow; and preliminary estimates for assumed liabilities, including transaction-related costs. These preliminary estimates are subject to revision upon completion of purchase accounting analysis with respect to the transaction.
Jim Rose, Sane Solutions’ CEO, said, "The acquisition brings significant benefits to Sane’s customers and employees, and enhances our market position and opportunity. Unica is the premier enterprise marketing management vendor, with an impressive customer base and distribution power, unmatched reputation for customer success, and financial strength. Unica represents the next-generation of internet and cross-channel marketing. Together, our solutions provide marketers with the power to turn insight into action."
"We are very excited by the acquisition of Sane Solutions, which expands our market opportunity and value proposition," stated Ralph A. Goldwasser, senior vice president and CFO, Unica. In order to drive long-term growth and realize the ultimate potential from this strategic move, we intend to increase the level of sales, marketing and R&D resources dedicated to this business. These investments are expected to have a slightly dilutive impact to the FY 2006 non-GAAP diluted EPS guidance we previously provided; however, we believe the acquisition will enhance Unica’s long-term growth opportunity.
The transaction is expected to close before March 31, 2006. Sane Solution’s co-founders, Jim Rose and Frank Faubert, will join Unica and serve as vice president of internet marketing business development and vice president of internet marketing solutions, respectively.