Solera Holdings Inc., an automotive and insurance software company, has announced it has reached an agreement to acquire Omnitracs, a leader in transportation and logistics telematics, and DealerSocket Inc., an enterprise relationship management tool designed for the automotive industry. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
The acquisition would create an integrated platform powered by aggregated data that could handle all touch points of a vehicle’s life cycle.
“Solera is the driving force behind the rapid digitization of the vehicle life cycle, delivering intelligent, data-driven, mission-critical solutions for our customers,” said CEO Darko Dejanovic of Solera in the release. “These highly strategic acquisitions will enable us to expand into adjacent verticals and capitalize on emerging trends in our industry. Solera’s unique position in a large and growing market allows us to transform the industry through innovation, proprietary data assets, unmatched scale and deep customer relationships.”
Solera and Omnitracs’ past
This is not the first time that Solera has considered acquiring Omnitracs.
In a 2019 lawsuit against the three companies’ equity firm, Vista Equity Partners, Kurt Lauk, a former independent board member at Solera, alleged Vista had blocked Solera from acquiring Lytx, a competitor of Omnitracs.
“Vista and [founder and CEO Robert] Smith were hoping to pawn off Omnitracs on Solera by using Solera’s money to bail them out of an unsuccessful and poorly run acquisition and bury it inside Solera’s portfolio, where Vista could hide its Omnitracs investment mistake from its own investors,” the lawsuit alleged.
“Vista and its Solera Board representatives — all who had a direct and/or indirect financial stake and interest in Omnitracs and wanted Solera to buy Omnitracs for their own personal benefit — blocked the Lytx purchase and opted to pursue the Omnitracs purchase instead. Essentially, Vista and its Solera Board representatives were attempting to use Solera’s financial power as a ‘bailout’ for their prior bad and underperforming Omnitracs investment,” the lawsuit said of Dejanovic and the managing director of Vista, Christian Sowul, who both served on Solera’s and Omnitracs’ boards simultaneously.
Lauk’s lawsuit was later dismissed in 2019 over jurisdiction issues.
SPAC rumors
Earlier this year, Vista Equity Partners was rumored to be combining the three companies within its portfolio to go public through the blank-check firm Apollo Strategic Growth Capital (NYSE:APSG).
In March, the potential $15 billion transaction was reported to be halted due to a decline in technology valuations.
The rumored SPAC would have been Vista Equity’s fourth attempt to exit its investment with Omnitracs and its second attempt to merge Solera and Omnitracs, a merger that could come to fruition with Monday’s Solera agreement.
Solera’s agreement to acquire Omnitracs and DealerSocket is still subject to definitive agreements including closing conditions and regulatory approval.
The deal is set to close during Q2 of 2021.
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