Qualtrics

Last updated
Qualtrics International Inc.
Company type Private
Industry Experience management
Founded2002;22 years ago (2002)
Founders
  • Scott M. Smith
  • Ryan Smith
  • Jared Smith
  • Stuart Orgill
Headquarters
Key people
Ryan Smith (Executive Chairman) [1]
Zig Serafin (CEO)
Chris Beckstead (President)
ProductsQualtrics XM Platform, Design XM, Customer XM, Employee XM, Product XM, Brand XM, XM Services
RevenueIncrease2.svg US$1.46 billion (2022)
Increase2.svgUS$−1.05 billion (2022)
Decrease2.svgUS$−1.06 billion (2022)
Total assets Decrease2.svgUS$3.39 billion (2022)
Total equity Decrease2.svgUS$1.90 billion (2022)
Owner Silver Lake
Number of employees
c. 5,600 (December 2022)
Website qualtrics.com
Footnotes /references
[2] [3]

Qualtrics is an American experience management company, with co-headquarters in Seattle, Washington, and Provo, Utah, in the United States. The company was founded in 2002 by Scott M. Smith, Ryan Smith, Jared Smith, and Stuart Orgill. [4]

Contents

Qualtrics offers a cloud-based subscription software platform for experience management, [5] which it launched in March 2017. [6]

On November 11, 2018, it was announced that Qualtrics would be acquired by SAP for US$8 billion. [7] The acquisition was completed on January 23, 2019. [8] On July 26, 2020, SAP announced its intent to take Qualtrics public, [9] and on January 28, 2021, Qualtrics began trading on the Nasdaq. [10] In March 2023, an investor group led by the private equity firm Silver Lake agreed to take Qualtrics private. On June 28, 2023, it was announced that Silver Lake and its co-investors, together with CPP Investments, acquired 100% of the outstanding shares in Qualtrics that Silver Lake did not already own, including the entirety of SAP’s majority ownership interest. [11]

History

Funding and valuation

In 2012, the company received a $70 million Series A investment from Sequoia Capital and Accel, [12] [13] It was the largest joint investment to date by these two firms. [14] In September 2014, the two firms returned to Series B funding, led by Insight Partners worth $150 million, a record for a Utah-based company, and valuing the company at $1 billion. [15]

Filing for IPO

On October 19, 2018, Qualtrics filed their S-1 registration statement with the intention of raising gross proceeds of $200 million through an initial public offering (IPO) of its Class B shares. [16] At the time, the company listed 9,000 global customers. The company was meant to be listed on the NASDAQ exchange under the ticker "XM" in reference to their flagship experience management product, the Qualtrics XM Platform.

Plans for the IPO were scrapped when it was announced in November 2018 that Qualtrics would be acquired by SAP (NYSE: SAP).

Awards and ranking

In 2020, Qualtrics earned a ‘Leader’ designation in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Voice of Customer, [17] a ‘leader’ designation in Forrester's Employee Experience for Enterprise wave, [18] and the top ranking in G2's Experience Management category. [19] In 2016, Qualtrics was ranked #12 on the Forbes Cloud 100 list, [20] moving to #6 in 2017. [21] In March 2020, Qualtrics's CoreXM platform was named a 2020 gold winner by the Edison Awards in the Applied Technology category. [22]

Acquisitions

In May 2016, Qualtrics acquired statistical analysis startup Statwing for an undisclosed sum. Statwing was a San Francisco-based company that created point-and-click software for advanced statistical analysis. [23] [24]

In April 2018 the firm acquired Delighted for an undisclosed sum. Delighted had more than 1,500 customers at the time of acquisition. [25]

In October 2021 the firm acquired Clarabridge in an all-stock deal for $1.125 billion. Clarabridge was a Virginia-based company that created software for omnichannel conversational analytics. [26] [27]

Acquisition by SAP SE

In November 2018, SAP announced its intent to acquire Qualtrics. SAP acquired all outstanding shares of Qualtrics for US$8 billion in an all cash deal. SAP secured €7 billion in financing. [28] At the time it was announced, the Qualtrics acquisition was SAP's second-biggest purchase ever, behind the $8.3 billion acquisition of travel and expense management firm Concur in 2014. [29] The acquisition was formally closed January 23, 2019. [30]

Initial public offering (IPO)

On 26 July 2020, SAP announced its intent to take Qualtrics public through an IPO in the United States. According to SAP, the decision to go public was made due to Qualtrics's performance since the acquisition, with 2019 cloud growth in excess of 40 percent. SAP's stated intent was to remain the majority shareholder. While acknowledging that the spinoff made financial sense due to market conditions, Patrick Moorhead, founder and principal analyst at Moor Insight & Strategy, felt there was also a corporate culture clash. In his view, SAP couldn't find a way to co-exist with the younger, more nimble Qualtrics. [31] [32] On January 28, 2021, Qualtrics began trading on the Nasdaq at $41.85 per share. [10] After reaching an intraday high a week later above $57, the stock settled into a trading range from approximately $30 to $40 for the remainder of the first half of 2021. As of June, 2022, the stock had fallen as low as $12.71 and generally hovered around $13.25.

On January 11, 2021, technical trade media noted that Brad Anderson, a high level executive of Microsoft, was leaving for Qualtrics. [33]

In May 2022, Qualtrics announced that they would go live on Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud infrastructure in London in the second half of 2022. Qualtrics customers would be able to access Qualtrics XM/OS platform locally via AWS London region. Furthermore, Qualtrics announced that they would be opening a London office and customer experience centre. [34]

Divestment by SAP SE

In March 2023, a group of investors including private equity firm Silver Lake, CPP Investment Board, and co-founder Ryan Smith agreed to buy Qualtrics from SAP in an all-cash deal worth $12.5 billion. [35]

Silver Lake acquisition

Silver Lake first invested more than $500m in Qualtrics during the company's IPO in 2021. [36] In March 2023, it was announced that Silver Lake agreed to take Qualtrics private. In June 2023, the Qualtrics acquisition by Silver Lake was completed. At the time of the close, the Qualtrics deal was the single largest investment in Silver Lake's near quarter-century history. [37]

In connection with the close, Accel, a global venture capital firm, as well as BDT & MSD Partners, a merchant bank built to serve the distinct needs of business owners and strategic, long-term investors; and DFO Management, the family investment office of Michael Dell, joined Silver Lake in investing in Qualtrics. Accel, which was one of Qualtrics’s earliest investors, invested $500 million. BDT & MSD Partners and DFO Management each made a co-investment of $250 million, for an aggregate commitment of $500 million. [38]

After the acquisition, in October of 2023, the workforce was reduced by 15%.

Experience management

Qualtrics launched its experience management platform in March 2017. Experience management is the practice of designing and improving products, services, and experiences for businesses and other organizations. [39]

Qualtrics holds an annual in-person experience management summit called Qualtrics X4 that includes keynotes, breakout sessions, product demos, and customer showcases. [40] [41] The summit was cancelled in 2020 and held online in 2021 and 2022.

Research

Quantitative statistical analysis performed with Qualtrics has been cited in a number of professional and academic journals. [42] Qualtrics became the first employee management platform measuring employee experiences through key metrics powered by predictive intelligence. [43] Researchers have used it as a survey tool and combine it with SPSS to analyze their survey data on employee experiences and many other types of survey data.

Researchers have also used similar, unmoderated platforms to conduct empirical bias testing for qualitative market research to evaluate implicit and unconscious bias that researchers may have when designing survey questions. [44]

See also

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References

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  2. ↑ "Qualtrics 2022 Annual Report (Form 10-K)". U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. 24 February 2023.
  3. ↑ "Qualtrics 2022 Proxy Statement (DEF 14A)". U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. 15 April 2022.
  4. ↑ Chapman, Lizette (15 May 2012). "Qualtrics Taps Accel, Sequoia For First-Ever VC Round". The Wall Street Journal .
  5. ↑ "Qualtrics XM - Experience Management Software". Qualtrics. Retrieved 2020-12-28.
  6. ↑ Rogers, Bruce. "Ryan Smith's Qualtrics Capitalizes On The Rise Of The 'Experience Economy'". Forbes. Retrieved 2020-12-28.
  7. ↑ "XO Data Press Release".
  8. ↑ "SAP Completes Qualtrics Acquisition". SAP News Center. 2019-01-23. Retrieved 2019-03-07.
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  10. 1 2 Bursztynsky, Jessica; Levy, Ari (28 January 2021). "Qualtrics closes up 51% after debut, valuing cloud software vendor at $27.3 billion". CNBC. Archived from the original on 28 January 2021. Retrieved 28 January 2021.
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  26. ↑ "Qualtrics Completes Acquisition of Clarabridge" . Retrieved 2021-10-01.
  27. ↑ "Qualtrics' $1.125B Acquisition Of Clarabridge Upends The Customer Feedback Management Market". 30 July 2021. Retrieved 2021-07-30.
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  33. ↑ Foley, Mary Jo, Corporate Vice President Brad Anderson is leaving Microsoft for Qualtrics , Zdnet, January 11, 2021
  34. ↑ "Qualtrics UK customers will be able to access the Qualtrics XM/OS platform locally via data centre in the AWS London Region". Business Wire. 12 May 2022. Retrieved 12 May 2022.
  35. ↑ Gara, Antoine (13 March 2023). "Silver Lake set to take over software company Qualtrics in $12.5bn deal" . Financial Times .
  36. ↑ "Qualtrics".
  37. ↑ "Qualtrics to be Acquired by Silver Lake and CPP Investments for $12.5 Billion".
  38. ↑ "Accel Invests in Qualtrics Alongside Silver Lake and CPP Investments" (Press release). 28 June 2023.
  39. ↑ "Qualtrics Customers | Trusted by +11,000 Leading Brands". Qualtrics. Retrieved 2020-12-28.
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