BY Richard Summerfield
Ecommerce marketplace enablement platform Packable has entered into a definitive agreement to merge with Highland Transcend Partners Corp, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), in a deal worth $1.55bn.
Packable, which is backed by private equity firm The Carlyle Group, was valued at around $1.1bn in November 2020 when Carlyle invested $250m to acquire its stake in the company.
Under the terms of the deal, Packable’s existing shareholders will receive 71 percent of the combined company, Highland Transcend SPAC founders and investors will own 19 percent, while private investment in public equity (PIPE) investors, including Fidelity Management & Research Company, Lugard Road Capital, Luxor Capital, Park West Asset Management and Morningside, will receive the remaining 11 percent.
“This is an incredibly exciting time for our team, and we are thrilled to partner with Highland Transcend as we plan to enter our next chapter as a public company,” said Packable co-founder and chief executive Andrew Vagenas. “While we’ve become a market leader in our industry, there is significant runway ahead of us in multiple avenues: from the continued proliferation of online marketplaces and geographic opportunities to our ability to invest in and grow Digitally Native Brands, while providing new data and technology services, as well as marketing options for our brand partners.”
“While we believe that third-party marketplaces will contribute more than 40 percent of all ecommerce revenues by 2025, brands find themselves challenged to manage the complexity of executing across these platforms,” said Ian Friedman, chief executive of Highland Transcend. “Packable has a leading software-driven offering enabling brands to grow their businesses across multiple online marketplaces. Andrew and the entire team have built an incredibly strong competitive platform; with approximately 75 million customer transactions to-date, we believe that Packable has one of the largest sets of third-party marketplace transaction data, outside of the marketplaces themselves. This data enables Packable’s competitive pricing, merchandising, and marketing decisions and will allow the company to launch a Software-as-a-Service offerings in the future.”
News: Carlyle-backed Packable agrees $1.55 billion SPAC merger