Crayon’s shares spiked by nearly a fifth yesterday following a report suggesting larger rival SoftwareOne could be studying the merits of a potential union.
The duo are already Europe’s twin software resale superpowers.
Norway-based Crayon has around 4,000 staff and revenues last year of NOK 6.4bn (£460m) making it around half the size of Switzerland-based SoftwareOne (9,300 staff and revenues of 1.01bn CHF – or £910m).
According to a Bloomberg report published on Friday, the latter is “exploring a potential combination of the two firms”.
It cited people familiar with the matter.
The rumours come as SoftwareOne explores a potential sale itself – efforts it said last month are “progressing”.
Having emerged as the leading bidder, Apax Partners and SoftwareOne’s key shareholders have been discussing various structures that would allow them to take both SoftwareOne and Crayon private and combine the two firms, Bloomberg reported.
SoftwareOne and Crayon are already the two dominant forces within the European software resale market.
The former generated 60% of its revenues last year from EMEA, with the remainder split between North America, Latin America and APAC. Crayon relies on EMEA for 62% of its revenues meanwhile, with the majority of that sub-total generated from the Nordics. Its non-EMEA business has more of a bias towards APAC.
Both firms were named as Leaders in Gartner’s most recent Magic Quadrant for Software Asset Management managed services, meanwhile.
Looking at their UK businesses, Crayon and SoftwareOne placed 61st and 108th in the recent Oxygen 250 (although the former was ranked by gross sales and the latter by ‘netted down’ revenues).
A spokesperson for SoftwareOne declined to comment. Crayon also declined to comment.
