Financial Overview:

Transaction Value: $85M

MW Highlights: 

• Workday, which provides on-demand human capital management and financial management software, edges closer to an IPO with an $85 million cash infusion from institutional investors such as T. Rowe Price, Morgan Stanley Investment Management, Janus Capital Group Inc, and Bezos Expeditions.
• With the proceeds, Workday plans on expanding its core technology, products, go-to-market capability, and administrative infrastructure. Additionally, in recent months it has extended its focus into financials, escalating its offering of core administration functions.
• The investment dresses up the company for IPO by bringing in elite investors.  If Workday goes to market, it would be co-CEO Dave Duffield's fourth exit, and his second with partner and co-CEO Aneel Bhusri.
  • Duffield co-founded Information Associates, which developed applications for the higher education market.
  • Soon after, in 1982 he served as CEO, chairman, and chief product architect at Integral Systems, the first company to offer DB2-based human resource and accounting systems.
  • In 1987, he founded PeopleSoft, serving as CEO and board chairman until Oracle's hostile takeover in January 2005.
• With total financial backing now at $250 million, Workday has been valued at $2 billion by experts.
• As Workday becomes an increasingly relevant payroll competitor to ADP and Lawson/Infor, its cloud-based solutions will provide scalability and global access that the slower-moving incumbents cannot readily provide.
• This transaction remains consistent with the hot trend of SaaS-based HR solutions.
• Led by the success of Salesforce.com's SaaS-based CRM solution, the market will become more and more comfortable with putting sensitive data onto the cloud.  We predict cloud-based HR outsourcing to benefit directly from this trend and consolidations will become the next topic of interest.

Press Release:

Please click here to read the press release.  

Martin Wolf was not a financial advisor in this transaction. To learn more about this transaction or our firm, contact Yousif Abudra at yabudra@martinwolf.com  or (925) 215-2760.