Wall Street Journal: SciQuest Agrees to Be Taken Private by Accel-KKR

“There are no discussions with Oracle, there are no discussions with IBM, there are no discussions with . . . anyone wanna pick a name . . . there are no discussions, there’s nobody.” – Stephen Wiehe, SciQuest CEO July 2015 (SciQuest Q2 Scoop Session Audio Excerpt)

As you read the above words, and listen to the audio excerpt from SciQuest’s Q2 Scoop session in July 2015, you will note that everything that the SciQuest CEO disputed as being inaccurate and untrue regarding my coverage, has proven to be both accurate and true.

Ohio did indeed drop SciQuest. You can read about it in my April 26th, 2016 post Ohio Drops SciQuest And The Power Of Truth.

Now less than a year after the CEO clearly stated that “there are no discussions with . . . anyone wanna pick a name . . . there are no discussions, there’s nobody” . . . . the company is sold and taken private for $509 million.

By the way, Mr. Wiehe’s company SciQuest, has sued me for writing the following post Oracle acquires SciQuest?  However they did not sue me for this second post – which came out on the same day; Investment banking firm naming IBM as a possible SciQuest suitor makes one wonder?.

Just take a few moments to let that sink in.

This leads into the third comment that Mr. Wiehe made in the Q2 Scoop session regarding my having an agenda.

Despite Mr. Wiehe’s “suggestion” to the contrary, I have never had, nor will I ever have an agenda – hidden or otherwise. The only goal of this blog is to seek the truth.

Again you can listen to what Mr. Wiehe said via the audio link.

Of course, and in the intervening months between my originally being served with a letter by SciQuest’s legal counsel threatening me with a lawsuit if I did not pull every single post I had written about SciQuest from this blog, and the recent news announcing the sale of the company, the search for the truth never stopped.

While I did not know the when in terms of a specific date, the sale itself was anticipated.

As a result, I continued to monitor the company’s share transactions.

Here is what I discovered.

Up until December 2014, and with the exception of 5 transactions out of a total of approximately 378, SciQuest CEO Wiehe had been steadily selling shares, going as far back as 2012. You can check out Mr. Wiehe’s activity on the Market Watch website.

Then on December 11/14 Mr. Wiehe received what is known has a Derivative/Non-derivative transfer of shares totaling $249,999. This was followed by another Derivative/Non-derivative transfer of shares worth $21,256 on May 29th, 2015.

Then starting on August 3rd, 2015 through to November 9th, 2015 – when he made the last and the largest share acquisition worth $113,740 – Mr. Wiehe steadily purchased shares.

In terms of the investment community, based on research it would appear that there was an upswing in share purchasing activity in the period between Mr. Wiehe’s assertion that the company wasn’t talking with anyone, and the Accel-KKR acquisition.

This past December, it was reported that “J. Goldman & Company purchased $14,708,000 in SciQuest, Inc. (SQI) Shares.” This was around the same time it was announced that Goldman had sold a $14 million stake in Groupon.

 

Another noteworthy acquisition of shares was on May 13th, 2016 – a mere few weeks before the deal was announced – when Murphy Michael R “scooped up 300,825 additional shares in SciQuest” to raise its stake to $23.5 million. Here is the link to that article: http://www.themarketdigest.org/201605/murphy-michael-r-buys-23-5-million-stake-in-sciquest-sqi/365409/

 

There are of course other Hedge Funds who, as reported in the above referenced article, “boosted” their stake in SciQuest leading up to the company’s sale for $509 million. As an aside, the Wall Street Journal reported, “SciQuest holders will receive $17.75 a share,” which represents a 34% premium over the previous day’s close.

Another interesting announcement during this period was on February 25th, 2016, when it was reported that SciQuest’s Board of Directors had “approved a share repurchase program that enables the company to repurchase up to $30 million of its outstanding common stock.”

In the famous words of Sgt. Joe Friday, these are “just the facts.”

One final fact . . . Accel-KKR has been a SciQuest shareholder since 2014.

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