Nearmap to Acquire itel in $1.3+ Billion Deal
Hey, so get this! Nearmap, which is backed by Thoma Bravo, is planning to snag itel, a company that does tech stuff for insurance folks. They're buying it from this private equity firm called GTCR.
Apparently, this deal means itel is worth more than $1.3 billion, and yeah, that includes their debt. Someone in the know told Reuters that whole bit. GTCR didn't really wanna say anything about the price though. Itâs pretty cool to see buyout firms are finally using some of that extra cash they had lying around. It felt like things were kinda stuck with the high-interest rates, and now we've got tariff drama too. The whole secondaries market thing, where people trade private assets, that's a big deal now also. Since companies aren't doing IPOs like they used to, which is how private equity usually gets its money out, a bunch of managers are selling their stuff for less than it's worth.
itel has been around since 1993, and they've got their own special database and tech that helps insurance companies save money, especially with property and car insurance stuff. They even have a mobile app that helps people figure out how much damage there is after something happens. These guys are based in Jacksonville, Florida, and get this, they work with all of the top 100 insurance companies in North America. GTCR, who manage a ton of money, like over $45 billion (wow!), bought itel back in August 2021 from PNC Riverarch Capital.
GTCR put out a statement on Tuesday saying that itel has actually doubled how much money they make over the last three years. Brian Matthews, the CEO at itel, said in his own statement that GTCR has been awesome to work with while they were building itel into a leading company for data and analytics in the property claims world. This sale to Thoma Bravo is happening just a little over a month after GTCR had a pretty sweet win by selling off their part of Worldpay, which is a payments company. That was a huge deal, like $24.25 billion! It's kinda rare to get that kind of return these days, tbh.
It feels like private equity firms have had to hang onto their investments for a longer time now. But Thoma Bravo has been busy too, they even sold their stake in Nasdaq, which is like a stock exchange thing, in two different big trades earlier this month. Oh, and Thoma Bravo actually bought Nearmap, which is an insurance tech company from Australia, back in December 2022. Raymond James and Bank of America helped out itel with the money stuff, and Latham & Watkins were their lawyers. Pretty complex stuff, right?
