Infor Announces USD1.5 Billion Investment Ahead of Potential IPO

By MTS Staff Writer On Jan 18, 2019

Infor, a global leader in business cloud software specialized by industry, announced an agreement to receive a $1.5 billion investment from shareholders Koch Equity Development, LLC (KED) and Golden Gate Capital.

This investment builds on KED’s investment of more than $2 billion in early 2017, and it represents an important milestone as Infor considers a potential IPO in 2019 or 2020, subject to market conditions.

“Koch and Golden Gate Capital have been phenomenal partners for Infor, and all of our 17,300 employees are excited about this milestone as we prepare for the next stage of growth,” said Charles Phillips, CEO of Infor.

Under Phillips’ leadership, and over the course of Infor’s partnership with KED and Golden Gate Capital, Infor has invested approximately $2.5 billion in product design and development over the last five years and delivered more than 475 new products, 1,870 integrations, and 20,700 industry features in its CloudSuite product line. Infor CloudSuite is now the only fully multi-tenant ERP suite spanning front and back office applications, as well as logistics with global support (in terms of languages, currencies, and localizations).

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“Koch was a customer of Infor before we became an investor in the Company, and Koch Industries’ companies continue to move their most mission critical applications to Infor CloudSuites,” said Jim Hannan, Koch Executive Vice President and CEO of Enterprises for Koch Industries, Inc. “Infor’s innovative products have helped lead our digital transformation as we continue to deploy them globally for 120,000 employees.”

With over $3 billion of revenue in fiscal year 2018, Infor became the first company to move mission critical ERP application suites to public clouds for entire industries. Infor’s CloudSuites are the foundation for digital transformation for more than 9,500 customers in 110 countries. Infor applications span financials, manufacturing, supply chain, human resources, and customer relationships.

Over the last five years, Infor has consistently gained market share in cloud applications, and 70% of its software license revenue is now derived from cloud applications.

Fundamental to Infor’s strategy is its ability to engineer each CloudSuite for a specific industry. Infor eliminates the need for expensive customizations and runaway consulting engagements. Customers routinely lower costs by 25% or more by retiring mods, eliminating big bang upgrades, and reducing infrastructure costs after moving to CloudSuite.

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Infor has expanded its presence in key industries such as healthcare, manufacturing, retail, the public sector, and hospitality. Over 72% of all hospitals in the US run Infor applications, as well as 19 of the top 20 automotive suppliers and 8 of the top 10 fashion brands.

“Companies see the value in shifting their enterprise applications to the cloud but can’t make that transition until critical industry features are replicated there. Infor built these previously bespoke features as standard cloud services and now has access to valuable data across business functions to build predictive analytics and insightful correlations on our Coleman AI platform,” said Phillips.

Infor CloudSuite is also future proofed for innovation. Infor applications run on public scale clouds and open source infrastructure not tied to a single data store and scale out at lower costs using commodity compute and storage on demand. Vertical integration is a legacy of on-premise computing, and modern applications leverage global, commodity infrastructure.

Leadership Quotes

“Infor has undergone a remarkable evolution over the years. We remain strong supporters of the Company’s strategy and leadership team as they pursue their next phase of growth and continue to enhance the operations of businesses across a range of sizes and industries,” said David Dominik, Managing Director of Golden Gate Capital, which made its first investment in Infor in 2002.

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“Koch continues to be impressed with Infor’s hyper-scaled, versatile technology, both as an investor, and as a customer of their software solutions,” said Matt Flamini, KED’s President. “Our confidence in the Infor team comes not only from their financial performance, but from the real world results we’re seeing as we implement Infor solutions throughout Koch Industries.”

“Infor’s emphasis on innovation and commitment to delivering solutions to its customers underpins the success of CloudSuites, which offers an unparalleled combination of industry-specific functionality and scalability. We are extremely excited about the opportunity ahead as the Company continues to deliver transformative new products and features,” said Rishi Chandna, Managing Director of Golden Gate Capital.

“Infor has used its partnership with Koch as an opportunity to co-innovate across the wide range of industries in which we operate,” said Brett Watson, Senior Managing Director of KED. “This investment is the result of a shared vision to continue creating innovative solutions that help companies operate more efficiently and effectively.”