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Oct 15, 2021

Silverpeak advises CloudTrade on sale to Advanced

Silverpeak acted as the exclusive financial advisor to CloudTrade on its sale to Advanced. CloudTrade is the leading provider to enterprise clients of e-invoicing, e-order and complex data capture services through its SaaS machine learning platform.

This is Silverpeak’s third software transaction in the last two weeks, reinforcing our expertise and experience advising software companies in Europe on both funding and M&A.

CloudTrade was founded in 2010 to offer a fresh approach to electronic document processing. Their unique, patented technology, enables companies to evolve past their reliance on paper or labour-intensive manual processing and transact digitally with their trading partners, irrespective of size or technical maturity. CloudTrade’s core product suite focuses on e-invoicing, including Universal Capture to automate all volumes and document types, Invoice Fraud Protection, as well as Intelligent Ordering Processing.

Silverpeak worked with the CloudTrade board to navigate multiple inbound approaches from global strategic buyers and generate competitive tension. This delivered multiple offers valuing the business at a strategic price, thus negating the need for a broader process. After engaging in a thorough preparation phase, the Silverpeak team worked to a tight timetable to quickly qualify the inbound approaches, negotiate the transaction and manage the process through to completion.

David Cocks, CloudTrade CEO, said, “Silverpeak spent the time to understand the goals of the shareholders and created an excellent Company overview with detailed numerical analysis. The team at Silverpeak took control of the whole process and without their diligence, tenacity and attention to detail, I have doubts whether it would have actually happened. It was really encouraging and exciting to have an experienced team working on our side, fully aligned with our objectives.”

Paddy MccGwire, Silverpeak Managing Partner leading the transaction said, ”This is a great outcome for David and his team at CloudTrade, demonstrating significant leverage to the investment round he received just over 3 years ago. Many transactions have a hurdle that appears during the process that needs to be overcome. This was no different. Silverpeak’s imaginative solution, working with the buyer, ensured we kept on track. Advanced is a very suitable strategic home for the business where the technology and platform can be fully exploited.”