Cision Limited, a software provider for public relations professionals and also the owner of PR newswire, is in talks with private equity firm for potential acquisition deal, reported Reuters on Monday, citing sources familiar with the matter.
Cision merged with Vocus in 2014 and after that it go through a series of buying about a dozen of companies including the acquisition of media intelligence service Gorkana in 2014, PR Newswire in 2016 and most recently TrendKite in 2019. To all these acquisitions Cision came on consolidating uneven PR services of the marketing products and tools category.
But all these acquisitions moves made the company itself an acquisition target for others.
Private equity firm GTCR LLC, which facilitated the merger deal between Cision and Vocus, is a partial owner of 38% stake in the company.
The Chicago-based company is reportedly hired an investment bank to conclude the current talks to be ended up on a sale deal, but it is not sure that the preliminary talks will be resulting to be coming up with a successful deal, cautioned the sources.
Cision is involved in a cloud-based software business which helps its customers to manage their public as well as government relations and marketing related issues.
Cision was combined with Vocus in 2014 by GTCR who acquired Cision for $170 million and Vocus for $446.5 million in the same year and later on in 2017 GTCR merged the Cision with a blank-check special purpose acquisition company Capitol Acquisition Group III after which the Cision become a public traded company. Now as of end of December 2018, GTCR is a partial owner of 38% stake in Cision.
Cision, which had a long-term debt of $1.2 billion at the end of last year, has a market capitalization of just over $2 billion based on its share’s closing price on Monday.
