Vista Equity Partners and Blackstone offer to buy Smartsheet for $8.4B in cash

Vista Equity Partners and Blackstone have agreed to acquire Smartsheet, the software-as-a-service (SaaS) workplace collaboration and management platform, for $8.4 billion in cash.

The companies say that the deal values ​​publicly-traded Smartsheet’s shares at a 41% premium over its 90-day average closing share price. Should regulators and shareholders approve it, shareholders would receive approximately $56.50 per share.

Under the agreement with Vista Equity Partners and Blackstone, Smartsheet will have a 45-day “go-shop” period to solicit alternative buyout offers. Smartsheet’s board will reserve the right to terminate the Vista Equity Partners and Blackstone deal to accept a better proposal “subject to the terms and conditions of the merge agreement.”

“Our next phase of growth and customer success is underway, and we look forward to partnering with Blackstone and Vista Equity Partners to accelerate our vision of modernizing work management for enterprises, globally,” Smartsheet CEO Mark Mader said in a press release. “This transaction is a testament to our employees’ outstanding work in serving customers and partners, and building an enterprise-grade, market-leading platform.”

Founded in 2005, Smartsheet offers a range of tools to assign workplace tasks, track project progress, manage calendars, and share documents via a tabular interface. Adoption was initially slow because it was too difficult to use, co-founder Brent Frei once admitted in an interview. But within a few years and after an aggressive redesign, Smartsheet managed to attract thousands of users.

By 2010, Smartsheet had over a million users, integrations with Office 365 and Microsoft Azure, and and iOS app.

Today, Smartsheet can import data from Microsoft Office or Google apps, and works with popular platforms including Salesforce, Dropbox, and AWS.