Pennsylvania-based Actua Corp., which is selling it's St. Paul-based GovDelivery to a huge private equity group for $153 million, realized pretty good value from its seven-year ownership of the 15-year-old provider of Internet-based government communications software.
Actua, which owns several software-as-a-service businesses, paid $20 million for 94 percent of GovDelivery's stock in 2009.
The rest is owned by founder-and-CEO Scott Burns and employees.
"Since our acquisition of the business in 2009 … GovDelivery has assembled a first-class management team and built out an industry-leading platform for digital government communications with a strong competitive moat," Actua CEO Walter Buckley said last month. "Through the execution of a highly effective growth strategy, GovDelivery has increased revenues by nearly 600 percent."
Upon completion of the transaction, Actua expects to realize net cash proceeds of about $132 million.
Actua said GovDelivery is used by more public sector organizations for digital communications with constituents than all other competitors combined. The company has 1,800-plus federal, state and local customers that connect with 120 million citizens.
GovDelivery, with 225 employees and approaching $40 million in revenue, invested more than $10.2 million, a huge chunk of sales, last year in product development, security and operations to feed fast growth, according to an SEC filing.
That number likely will rise under the new owner, Vista Equity Partners.
