InFlight is acquired by Skuid
A technology business valued on what it was worth to the right acquirer, not on a multiple of its standalone revenue. Closed February 2022.
Details in this case study have been altered and generalized to protect client confidentiality. It is shared to illustrate our approach, not to promise any particular result.
The situation
InFlight built technology that modernised legacy enterprise applications without requiring them to be rewritten, a capability with obvious strategic value to a platform business but a hard one to value on standalone revenue alone.
The business had built technology that modernised legacy enterprise applications without rewriting them. On standalone revenue it was a modest company; to the right platform it was a capability that would take years to build. Early conversations with buyers who valued it on revenue alone had gone nowhere.
The approach
Our first step was not the buyer list. It was to establish what InFlight was worth to an acquirer strategically rather than financially, and to build the case for it in a form a buyer's own deal team could take to their board.
Once we understood that, we could reframe the conversation. Rather than presenting InFlight as a revenue story, we laid out the strategic case clearly: what the technology did inside a platform, what it would cost to replicate, and what an acquirer's own customers would gain. That case was written so a buyer's deal team could take it straight to their board.
Skuid acquired the business in February 2022.
The outcome
Skuid acquired the business in February 2022 on terms that reflected the strategic value of the technology rather than a multiple of its standalone revenue. The specific numbers are not what matters here; what matters is that the process found the buyer to whom InFlight was worth the most, and closed in months rather than the year a broad auction would have taken.
The transaction closed on terms that reflected the strategic value of the technology rather than a multiple of its standalone revenue.
What this transaction shows
Not every company is best sold on its financial profile. Often the most valuable thing an advisor can do is work out which buyer the business is strategically worth the most to, and then build the case that lets that buyer justify the price internally.
