BY Richard Summerfield
Four years after it acquired the company, private equity giant KKR & Co has agreed to sell Epicor Software Corp to Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, in a deal valued at $4.7bn.
KKR, which bought Epicor from Apax Partners in 2016 for $3.3bn, including debt, had been exploring a sale of the business since 2019. The deal is expected to close later this year.
“This is an exciting day for the entire Epicor family – employees, customers, and partners alike – and validates the company’s leadership position across markets we serve,” said Steve Murphy, chief executive of Epicor. “We welcome this new partnership with CD&R, which shares our vision for growing the company, and I thank KKR for a highly successful partnership these past few years. We are excited to work with CD&R to increase investment in our market-leading product portfolio and to enhance our ability to support an ever-increasing range of customer needs.”
“Epicor’s reputation for quality and performance, and its impressive portfolio of next-generation cloud products, position the company well to accelerate growth in the coming years,” said Jeff Hawn, operating partner at CD&R. “We look forward to partnering with the Epicor management team to further expand Epicor’s product portfolio as well as make strategic acquisitions to meet customers’ evolving digital transformation needs.”
“Four years ago, we embarked on an ambitious product modernization journey together with Epicor and are incredibly proud of the successes that the company has achieved to date, particularly with its recent cloud releases,” said John Park, chairman of the Epicor board and head of Americas technology private equity at KKR. “We are confident that CD&R will provide valuable support as the company continues these product- and customer-centric investments to accelerate growth in the cloud.”