Is some of Infor up for sale? Hmmm... Infor's private equity owners could be negotiating to sell a piece of the company or perhaps even evaluating an IPO, Reuters reports.
Infor specializes in business applications for specific vertical markets, and ERP built for the cloud. Former Oracle President Charles Phillips leads Infor as CEO. Pundits think Infor's valuation is roughly $9 billion including debt of roughly $5.5 billion.
Infor, which has a growing channel partner program, is privately held but discloses some financial metrics from time to time. For instance, Q4 2016 software revenue rose 34.9 percent, and more than 40 percent of the company's software license revenue for fiscal year 2016 came from SaaS, up from 10 percent three years ago.
According to Reuters:
"Golden Gate Capital and Summit Partners, the private equity firms that own Infor, may choose to pursue a debt investment or other ways to bring on additional investors besides a sale of a minority equity stake."
The moves could even include a potential IPO, the report added. ChannelE2E has not independently confirmed the report.
Summit Partners, in particular, is a familiar private equity name to ChannelE2E readers. The PE firm also owns Continuum -- which develops RMM (remote monitoring and management), BDR (backup and disaster recovery) and NOC (network operations center) platforms for MSPs.
Infor's Partner Program
During a customer and partner conference in New York this past summit, Infor Channel Chief Jeff Abbott discussed a range of partner program moves. They included:
- Infor Partner Network launching Demand Generation Exchange (DGX). The exchange allows partner to leverage product collateral, marketing materials and more. Partners can also share materials in the system.
- Infor Amplify: A tool that allows partners to more easily socialize promotional materials.
Infor's top partners typically earn 40 percent margin during the first year of a customer's contract, and 25 percent every year thereafter, according to Diginomica.
Even as those partners pursue more wins, they're surely keeping an eye on Infor's ownership and financial backers.
