INFOR, a global software company, plans to tap the equity market to raise funds for its capital requirement. It reached an agreement with shareholders for a new investment of $1.5 billion as it aims to bring the business to greater heights with improved operations and latest offerings across all locations, including the Philippines.
“Manila is our second-largest location. With more capital, we will be expanding via investment in new markets, products and acquisitions. All those eventually lead to more employees in our Manila office since they become part of new product teams and integration efforts,” Infor CEO Charles Phillips told the BusinessMirror on Thursday in an e-mail interview.
Apart from expanding their office here as a result of the growth, he said Infor is “building a new campus to accommodate this next wave of growth.” He did not divulge, though, the amount that Infor will be spending for such initiatives in the Philippines.
The capital infusion from Koch Equity Development Llc. (KED) and Golden Gate Capital (GGC) comes ahead of a potential initial public offering (IPO) the company considers this year or in 2020. Such move, though, is 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,” the top executive said.
The enterprise software provider has leveraged on its alliance with Koch as an opportunity to co-innovate across the wide range of industries where the latter operates, KED Senior Managing Director Brett Watson said.
“This investment is the result of a shared vision to continue creating innovative solutions that help companies operate more efficiently and effectively,” he said.
Seeing the firm’s remarkable evolution over the years, GGC constantly backs up Infor’s endeavors.
“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 GGC.
Since the partnership among the three organizations came into being, Infor has invested around $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.
The company was the first to move mission critical ERP application suites to public clouds for entire industries. Its CloudSuite is currently 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.
Pivotal to Infor’s strategy is its capability to engineer each CloudSuite for a specific industry. The firm eliminates the need for expensive customizations and runaway consulting engagements.
In fact, customers routinely lower costs by 25 percent or more by retiring mods, eliminating big-bang upgrades and mitigating infrastructure costs after moving to CloudSuite. Hence, it serves as the foundation for digital transformation of over 9,500 customers in 110 countries.
“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,” Phillips said.
Koch is among Infor’s clients prior to becoming an investor. KED started betting on the company in early 2017, with more than $2 billion in investment.
“Koch Industries’ companies continue to move their most mission-critical applications to Infor CloudSuites. Infor’s innovative products have helped lead our digital transformation as we continue to deploy them globally for 120,000 employees,” said Jim Hannan, Koch EVP and CEO of Enterprises for Koch Industries Inc.
“Koch continues to be impressed with Infor’s hyper-scaled, versatile technology, both as an investor, and as a customer of their software solutions. 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,” KED’s President Matt Flamini added.
For GGC, which made its first investment in Infor in 2002, the company’s creativeness and commitment to delivering solutions to its customers attracted them to patronize its offerings like the CloudSuite that 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,” GGC Managing Director Rishi Chandna said.
A global leader in business cloud software for enterprise and small and medium businesses, Infor offers various applications that span across financials, manufacturing, supply chain, human resources, and customer relationships. Manned by 17,000 employees, it serves more than 68,000 customers in over 170 countries worldwide.
It has expanded its presence in key industries, such as healthcare, manufacturing, retail, the public sector, and hospitals.
In the Philippines alone, it has over 300 customers in various industries, such as food and beverage, fashion, logistics, and manufacturing and distribution, among others.
The company has consistently gained market share in cloud applications over the last five years. At present, 70 percent of Infor’s software license revenue is derived from cloud applications. For fiscal year 2018, the company posted more than $3 billion in revenue.