Clayton, Dubilier & Rice has agreed to buy Texas-based business management software company Epicor Software from KKR for $4.7 billion (including debt).
Why it matters: It's the largest enterprise software deal so far in 2020. It's also a big win for KKR, which tried but failed to sell Epicor last year.
- ROI: KKR bought Epicor in 2016 from Apax Partners for around $3.3 billion (including debt), and it recently extracted $560 million via a $1.7 billion dividend recap.
The bottom line: "The company, which makes back-office and sales software for manufacturing, distribution, retail and service-industry customers ... has completed a number of acquisitions under KKR’s ownership. Those include deals for electronic-data interchange software maker 1 EDI Source Inc. and warehouse-management software provider Majure Data," writes the Wall Street Journal's Miriam Gottfried.
