Bending Spoons Closes Miro Deal, With Ex-Miro Holders Plowing $295 Million Into Its Stock
The all-cash purchase is done, and the company's August outlook does not yet count Miro.
Bending Spoons, the Milan-based company that buys digital businesses, has completed its purchase of Miro, the visual collaboration platform, paying all cash for 100% of the shares, the company said Monday. At closing, certain former Miro shareholders put about $295 million of their proceeds into newly issued Bending Spoons stock.
Sellers become shareholders
The former Miro holders took approximately 6.2 million newly issued Bending Spoons ordinary shares for that roughly $295 million, the company said. The shares were issued in a private placement exempt from registration under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933.
Bending Spoons shares traded at $44.17 in Monday trading, up about 0.2% from the prior close, for a market value of US$28.0 billion.
What Miro brings
Miro says it serves more than 100 million users across 250,000 customers, and Bending Spoons describes the platform as used by more than 250,000 organizations to brainstorm, plan and build together.
Bending Spoons says it buys digital businesses, overhauls them and reinvests the earnings in further acquisitions. It says it has run that strategy for more than a decade and has never sold a material business. Its main businesses include Airtable, AOL, Brightcove, Eventbrite, Evernote, Tractive, Vimeo and WeTransfer, along with Miro.
CEO and co-founder Luca Ferrari said Miro has "built a strong business around a product that makes complex collaborative work feel simple." Miro CEO and co-founder Andrey Khusid said that in Bending Spoons, Miro has "an owner who invests for the long term."
Outlook leaves Miro out
The financial outlook Bending Spoons issued on August 13 was based only on the businesses it owned as of August 12, so it carries no contribution from Miro. The company said it expects to fold Miro into that outlook when it next reports financial results.
Until that next earnings report, the August 13 outlook stands without Miro in it.
