Infor announces $1.5bn investment ahead of potential IPO


Johannesburg, 13 Feb 2019

Infor, a global leader in business cloud software specialised by industry, has announced an agreement to receive a $1.5 billion investment from shareholders Koch Equity Development, LLC (KED) and Golden Gate Capital.

This investment builds on KED's investment of more than $2 billion in early 2017, and it represents an important milestone as Infor considers a potential IPO in 2019 or 2020, subject to market conditions.

"Koch and Golden Gate Capital have been phenomenal partners for Infor, and all of our 17 300 employees are excited about this milestone as we prepare for the next stage of growth," confirms Charles Phillips, CEO of Infor.

Under Phillips' leadership, and over the course of Infor's partnership with KED and Golden Gate Capital, Infor has invested approximately $2.5 billion in product design and development over the last five years and delivered more than 475 new products, 1 870 integrations and 20 700 industry features in its CloudSuite product line. Infor CloudSuite is now the only fully multi-tenant ERP suite spanning front and back office applications, as well as logistics with global support (in terms of languages, currencies and localisations).

"Koch was a customer of Infor before we became an investor in the company, and Koch Industries' companies continue to move their most mission-critical applications to Infor CloudSuites. Infor's innovative products have helped lead our digital transformation as we continue to deploy them globally for 120 000 employees," states Jim Hannan, Koch Executive Vice-President and CEO of Enterprises for Koch Industries, Inc.

"Infor has undergone a remarkable evolution over the years. We remain strong supporters of the company's strategy and leadership team as they pursue their next phase of growth and continue to enhance the operations of businesses across a range of sizes and industries," says David Dominik, Managing Director of Golden Gate Capital, which made its first investment in Infor in 2002.

With over $3 billion of revenue in fiscal year 2018, Infor became the first company to move mission-critical ERP application suites to public clouds for entire industries. "Infor's CloudSuites are the foundation for digital transformation for more than 9 500 customers in 110 countries. Infor applications span financials, manufacturing, supply chain, human resources and customer relationships," confirms Jane Thomson, Managing Director of EOH Infor Services, Infor's Master Partner in Africa (operating as a Gold Partner). "Over the last five years, Infor has consistently gained market share in cloud applications, and 70% of its software licence revenue is now derived from cloud applications."

Fundamental to Infor's strategy is its ability to engineer each CloudSuite for a specific industry. Infor eliminates the need for expensive customisations and runaway consulting engagements. Customers routinely lower costs by 25% or more by retiring mods, eliminating big bang upgrades, and reducing infrastructure costs after moving to CloudSuite. Infor has expanded its presence in key industries such as healthcare, manufacturing, retail, the public sector and hospitality.

"Companies see the value in shifting their enterprise applications to the cloud but can't make that transition until critical industry features are replicated there. Infor built these previously bespoke features as standard cloud services and now has access to valuable data across business functions to build predictive analytics and insightful correlations on our Coleman AI platform," says Phillips.

Infor CloudSuite is also future-proofed for innovation. "Infor applications run on public scale clouds and open source infrastructure not tied to a single data store and scale out at lower costs using commodity compute and storage on demand. Vertical integration is a legacy of on-premises computing, and modern applications leverage global, commodity infrastructure," concludes Thomson.

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EOH Infor Services

EOH Infor Services was founded in 1995 as Baan South Africa, becoming Softworx after a management buy-out in 1999. It became a member of the EOH Group in December 2000 and in 2011 was appointed as the only Infor Gold Channel Partner in Sub-Saharan Africa. In 2014, it was appointed as Infor Master Partner, one of only a few worldwide. Most recently, as the result of a rebranding, it became EOH Infor Services in 2018.

The company focuses on providing the right solutions to its customers. It delivers enterprise applications, enterprise resource planning solutions, and drives extended best of breed solutions, including supply chain planning, extended warehouse management, asset maintenance, hospitality management, product life cycle management, information management (BI, data warehousing and analytics), and enterprise performance management (financial planning, forecasting, budgeting, consolidation and governance).

For more information, please visit www.eohinforservices.com.

Infor

Infor is a global leader in business cloud software specialised by industry. With 17 300 employees and over 68 000 customers in more than 170 countries, Infor software is designed for progress. To learn more, please visit www.infor.com.

Infor customers include:

* 19 of the top 20 aerospace companies
* 9 of the top 10 high-tech companies
* 18 of the 25 largest US healthcare delivery networks
* 18 of the 20 largest US cities
* 19 of the top 20 automotive suppliers
* 17 of the top 20 industrial distributors
* 15 of the top 20 global retailers
* 4 of the top 5 brewers
* 17 of the top 20 global banks
* 9 of the 10 largest global hotel brands
* 8 of the top 10 global luxury brands

Koch Equity Development, LLC (KED)

With offices in Wichita and London, KED focuses its efforts on strategic acquisitions and industry agnostic principal investments. Significant principal investments completed include Getty Images, Global Medical Response, Meredith/Time Inc, Solera Holdings Inc, The ADT Corporation, and Transaction Network Services. Since 2012, KED has invested more than $10 billion of equity in principal investments.

Since 2003, Koch companies have invested nearly $100 billion in acquisitions and other capital expenditures. With a presence in 50 countries, Koch companies employ nearly 120 000 people worldwide, with about 65 000 of those in the United States. From January 2009 to present, Koch companies have earned more than 1 300 awards for safety, environmental excellence, community stewardship, innovation and customer service.

Golden Gate Capital

Golden Gate Capital is a San Francisco-based private equity investment firm with over $15 billion of capital under management. The principals of Golden Gate Capital have a long and successful history of investing across a wide range of industries and transaction types, including going-privates, corporate divestitures and recapitalisations, as well as debt and public equity investments. Other notable software investments sponsored by Golden Gate Capital include BMC Software, Vector Solutions, Neustar, Inc, LiveVox, and 2020 Technologies. For more information, visit www.goldengatecap.com.

Editorial contacts

Raynique Ducie
Perfect Word Consulting
perfectword@trinitas.co.za