Both companies’ shares prices are now hovering just below record levels.
And the Rich Lister founders of both business – Atlassain’s Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquar, and WiseTech’s Richard White – are determined to keep investing as they look to reinforce the competitive advantage of their businesses.
Speaking to White on Tuesday, it’s clear where his focus lies.
“This is about the future,” he told Chanticleer.
There is no pending deal to be done, and no big strategic shift looming. Instead, White is determined to take the chance to strengthen WiseTech’s balance sheet, improve liquidity and intensify the company’s growth push.
“We just need a little bit of fuel to make that work. This is all about growth.”
That more deals will follow is inevitable. But White bristles at any suggestion his string of deals can be seen as a roll-up.
WiseTech has its own internal M&A team chasing businesses that are generally not up for sale. White emphasises that it targets founder-led companies and in all of the deals the company has done, the founder remains with WiseTech, and is locked in for up to five years.
WiseTech splits its deals into two categories – geographic expansion and moves into adjacent. The company’s latest and biggest deal, last month’s $92 million acquisiton of Singaporean supply chain tracking and management software firm Containerchain, was an example of the latter.
That deal was also designed to push White further down the track of building a software solution for what he calls his customers’ biggest pain point – dealing with border compliance in a logistics world increasingly dominated by cross-border transactions.
White says he has a lot of work to do building out WiseTech’s coverage across the G20 plus 20 – essentially the world’s largest economies.
“That’s a really big, very important goal. It solves this enormous pain point for the industry.”
from Trendy Newses https://ift.tt/2Fj5YXk
0 Comments