- GeneralM&A
- September 13, 2021
- 5 minutes read
Alert: Intuit Buys Mailchimp For $12B
In what marks one of the biggest tech acquisitions of this year and one of the biggest acquisitions of a…
In what marks one of the biggest tech acquisitions of this year and one of the biggest acquisitions of a bootstrapped startup on record, Mailchimp, the popular e-mail marketing and automation platform, has been bought by financial software company Intuit for $12bn(!).
- Intuit (NASDAQ: INTU) has confirmed that it’s buying Mailchimp to make it its fifth major product suite. The other four are TurboTax for tax filing, QuickBooks accounting software, budgeting app Mint, and credit scoring service Credit Karma that Intuit bought last year for $7bn.
- Mailchimp is a super-success story in many ways thanks to this acquisition. It’s rare that a tech company completely bootstrapped from its start is selling for $12bn, it’s actually unheard of. It marks off a sweet exit for a company founded two decades ago and is still controlled by its two founders; Ben Chestnut and Dan Kurzius.
- The $12bn deal is split into cash and stock; first, $500mn of restricted stock units for Mailchimp employees, then equal parts cash and stock for the remaining $11.5bn. At that price, founders Chestnut and Kurzius are likely the latest Scrooge McDuck’s in town given they own most of the company.
- It’s said that Mailchimp had $300mn in EBITDA in 2020 so a $12bn deal represents a 40x multiple to earnings. Though high, such a multiple isn’t out of the blue when it comes to acquiring hot tech companies.
- Who out there knew that launching a platform to facilitate e-mail marketing and automation could fetch $12bn one day; probably Mailchimp founders Chestnut and Kurzius. They’ll be fetching very good money from the deal along with the employees that’ll split the $500mn stock payout separated for their cause.
- To make the acquisition story sweeter, Mailchimp was born and bred in Atlanta, Georgia, rather than a major tech hub like San Francisco or New York. This makes it a very noteworthy exit in Atlanta’s tech startup history.
- Intuit says it’s taking out a new loan of between $4.5bn to $5bn to fund Mailchimp’s purchase, implying that it’s a really serious deal where the company is ready to increase its debt load by much to clinch it. The acquisition is expected to be completed before this year’s end.
