A Bloomberg report late Tuesday afternoon suggested a transaction which could take CA Technologies, Inc. private, combining with BMC Software, who went private in 2013 in a deal with Bain and Golden Gate Capital.
What does this mean? CA and BMC both serve the enterprise software space, albeit in slightly different focuses. Both have had dozens of acquisitions, and would mean at least hundreds of products that would need to be evaluated and phased out, or combined into a workable platform.
While BMC is a leader in ITSM solutions, CA has more strength in data center, cloud and mainframe. They do have a good amount of overlap that would require the elimination of redundancies. Would they pick the stronger offering and get rid of the other? Either way you can expect a sizable reduction in force.
Last official numbers showed BMC with 6,900 employees (in 2012, and some speculate that number has been cut to around 5,000 currently), CA Technologies clocks in with about 11,500 employees. Both entities have been known in the past to slash employee rosters, with BMC’s most recent about six months ago.
BMC’s 2012 revenue was $2.172 billion, CA’s 2016 revenue was $4.262 billion. A merger this size would displace Symantec as the #8 largest software company globally by revenue, just under Salesforce at $6.7 billion annual revenue. But there has yet to be any confirmation from any of the parties involved. So even if there were talks, there would still have to be months of deal making between regulators, boards, shareowners, and so on.
What do you think might be happening? Include your comments below.
Full Disclosure: I was a BMC Software employee from 2012-2016.
