News has broken in the last week that supply chain planning vendor Logility is being acquired by Aptean, a group that offers ERP and other enterprise software applications. Not as momentous as supply chain planning software i2 which was acquired in by JDA software in 2010, the deal marks in some ways the end of an era in supply chain planning software.
The details of the Aptean acquisition are as follows: It comes after rumors in early December that Logility was seeking a buyer, and an activist investment firm was calling on the company to do the same. At the time of the deals announcement, Logility was trading at around $11.30 per share. Under the terms of the acquisition, Aptean will pay Logility shareholders $14.30 per share, or a premium of about 27%. But the stock was at about $14 per share in 1990-91- after which it fell to as low as a buck and some change in the tech sell off of 2001. Then came a long slow rise back to $14 in 2018, not much of rise over 17 years. It will be an all-cash deal for the Atlanta-based company.
Unlike Logility, Aptean is privately held. Its investors include TA Associates, Insight Partners, Charlesbank Capital Partners, and Clearlake Capital Group.
It appears the company will remain privately held.
Logility has over 500 customers in 80 countries. It had about $102 million in revenue in its fiscal year ending last April, down from $108 million in 2023. It had net income in 2024 of about $9.6 million.
Logility had a market cap of about $400 million at the time of the announcement.
Logility has a wide variety of supply chain solutions, but historically has been most known for its demand and supply planning software, including Sales & Operations Planning.
More recently, like most other software companies it has been focused on adding AI to its solutions, adopting an “AI first” posture in development and its go-to-market strategies, after recently acquiring an AI firm.
For about 30 years, Logility operated as division of parent American Software, which once was a leader in manufacturing software but saw its success start to ebb in the 2000s, to a state of extinction not long after.
In October 2024, the whole company was renamed Logility Supply Chain Solutions, and its stock symbol also changed from AMSOFT to LGTY.
Then in December, 2717 Partners LP, a San Francisco-based investment firm, sent a public letter to the company’s board of directors, calling for it “to explore strategic alternatives, including a sale of Logility.” Then days later came the report from Reuters that Logility was working with investment firm Lazard to gauge takeover interest from potential buyers.
Just weeks later, the deal with Aptean is announced. This means that the last of three main supply chain planning vendors of the late 1990s and early 2000s is now gone after JDA acquired both i2 and Manugistics more than a decade ago.
Conservative in its approach to market, the company was modestly successful, but could never quite make the big time. But Logility remained an independent for many years after i2 and “Manu” were long gone. Now acquired, the Logility name will probably stick around for a while, but will disappear eventually in favour of “Aptean Supply Chain Planning” or something, because that is just the way these things always go. So the last of the three supply chain planning vendors of the software market’s pioneering days has been acquired, and will fade into oblivion like Manugistics and i2 before it.
Source: Supply Chain Digest
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