Thoma Bravo sells Ellie Mae to Intercontinental Exchange in deal worth $11B
Thoma Bravo, a private equity investment firm founded by Puerto Rican entrepreneur Orlando Bravo, announced the sale of its portfolio company Ellie Mae to Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), in a deal worth $11 billion.
Ellie Mae, based in Pleasanton, CA with approximately 1,700 employees, was founded in 1997 with a mission to automate and digitize the trillion-dollar residential mortgage industry. Meanwhile, ICE is an operator of global exchanges and clearing houses and provider of mortgage technology, data and listing services.
“We have been on a journey, as we have long said, ‘to automate everything automatable’ for the mortgage industry, and joining ICE, which has followed a parallel journey in global exchanges, will allow us to further accelerate realizing our vision,” said Jonathan Corr, CEO of Ellie Mae.
“We also greatly appreciate, and have significantly benefited from, the operational and strategic support from Thoma Bravo. They were instrumental in helping us achieve this outcome, which is a great one for our customers and the industry in general,” he said.
Ellie Mae provides technology services to all participants in the mortgage supply chain, including more than 3,000 customers and thousands of partners and investors participating on their open network who provide liquidity to the market, according to a statement.
“Twenty years after we founded Intercontinental Exchange to provide a transparent trading platform for the energy industry, and following two decades of providing continued innovation to help customers navigate global markets, we are pleased to announce the acquisition of Ellie Mae, which will help us similarly transform the mortgage marketplace,” said Jeffrey C. Sprecher, CEO of Intercontinental Exchange.
“Our planned acquisition represents a one-of-a-kind opportunity to add an extraordinary enterprise with great leadership to our family,” he said. “It will also enhance ICE’s growth strategy in mortgage technology, with complementary products and a wide array of customers and stakeholders who will benefit from our core and proven expertise in operating networks and marketplaces.”
In addition to its Digital Lending Platform capabilities and its partner network, Ellie Mae also provides technology solutions that enable its clients to achieve greater levels of consumer engagement, efficiencies through automation, and a modernization of the loan manufacturing process through its recent introduction of machine learning and artificial intelligence, it said in a statement.
“This transaction will benefit ICE and its shareholders,” said ICE CEO Scott Hill. “The strength of our balance sheet, and the combined cash flows, position this deal to be accretive in the first full year and to meet all of our key strategic and financial acquisition criteria.”
The transaction, which is not subject to a financing condition, is expected to close in the third quarter or early fourth quarter of 2020, following regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions.
