The era of Coupa as procurement tech’s headline public company is coming to a close: the business spend management (BSM) vendor announced Monday (December 12) it had entered into a definitive agreement to be taken private by Thoma Bravo.
The journey that brought Coupa to this point has been a fascinating one. In 2015, the year before Coupa went public, it reported revenues of $50.8 million. Six years after the IPO and many expansions later, Coupa reported fiscal year 2022 revenue of $725 million, according to investor disclosures. In that time, the vendor went from an industry darling best known for its comparatively easy-to-use P2P and expense management solutions to the industry-leading source-to-pay (S2P) suite, with ambitions to expand beyond the procurement- and finance-centric market into supply chain, treasury, HR and more.
Beyond the immediate financial considerations for Coupa shareholders, Thoma Bravo’s acquisition marks the beginning of a new chapter for the procurement technology market, which has grown to encompass materially more than source-to-pay alone. And with that comes numerous implications for the competitive landscape, as well as for ecosystem partners such as implementers and, of course, Coupa customers themselves.
In this Spend Matters PRO brief, we offer our first take analysis on the near-term implications of the transaction for the key parties who are most affected. Future briefs will also examine the potential synergies Coupa may tap into as a portfolio company of Thoma Bravo.
