Koch Equity Development LLC, the investment and acquisition subsidiary of Koch Industries, has agreed to make an investment of more than $2 billion in Infor. The investment will provide Infor access to additional growth capital to accelerate innovation, expand distribution and continue disrupting the enterprise applications industry.
The investment by KED significantly strengthens Infor’s capital base and provides an entrée into a large ecosystem of businesses contemplating digital transformation. Infor said it became the first company to move mission critical industry applications to the cloud, and now counts more than 66 million users of its cloud applications. The company’s double-digit revenue growth in its most recent quarter was fueled by a 130-percent annual increase in SaaS revenue; more than half of Infor’s software revenues are now derived from cloud applications.
Infor’s cloud strategy uses Amazon Web Services, enabling the company to invest in deep industry functionality with capital that would otherwise be needed to maintain its own data center infrastructure. Infor’s broad set of applications running on a hyper-scale cloud with cutting-edge data science and design provide a foundation for modernizing companies in healthcare, fashion, retail, distribution, public sector, and discrete and process manufacturing.
Under CEO Charles Phillips’ leadership, Infor invested approximately $2 billion in product design and development over the past five years and delivered more than 400 new products, 1,700 integrations, and 16,000 industry features in its CloudSuite product line. Infor now has 15,000 employees and operates in more than 170 countries.
This transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals, is expected to close in early 2017. The KED investment will be a combination of preferred and common equity.