SAP is buying business-travel and expense software vendor Concur for about US$8.3 billion, in a bid to continue growing out its portfolio of cloud-based applications.
The move comes a couple of weeks after Bloomberg reported that Concur had been shopping itself to potential buyers, including SAP, Oracle and Microsoft. Oracle decided not to make a deal and Microsoft wasn’t interested at all, according to the Bloomberg report.
Concur, based in Bellevue, Washington, has 4,200 employees and more than 23,000 customers encompassing some 25 million users, the companies said, announcing the acquisition. The Concur board has unanimously approved the deal, which is expected to close in the fourth quarter, the companies said.
Concur sales are growing quickly, as revenue rose 28 percent to $178.4 million for the quarter ended June 30, but the company isn’t currently profitable.
From a product standpoint, SAP and Concur already share many joint customers, and Concur has created a connector that ties its software into SAP back-end financial systems.
SAP said that its business network will transact more than $600 billion annually after the deal closes, across more than 25 different industries, with annual corporate travel spending of $1.2 trillion worldwide funneled through the company’s software.
“The acquisition of Concur is consistent with our relentless focus on the business network,” said SAP CEO Bill McDermott in a statement. “We are making a bold move to innovate the future of business within and between companies.”
The companies are hosting a conference call at 6 p.m. Eastern time to further discuss the deal.
(More to follow.)