Shares of TurboTax developer Intuit rose Tuesday morning after the company revealed it was buying email-marketing firm Mailchimp for a whopping $12 billion.
Intuit said that the cash-and-stock deal — the biggest in the firm’s history — would help it sell additional services to small businesses, many of which already use the company’s TurboTax and QuickBooks software.
Atlanta-based Mailchimp, which helped pioneer the now-ubiquitous email marketing industry, has never taken outside investment since it was founded in 2001, unlike almost all other tech firms with multibillion-dollar valuations — making the $12 billion price tag all the more remarkable.
Intuit — which has a market capitalization of about $152 billion — said in an announcement late Monday that the deal would let the company “become the center of small business growth” and “disrupt the small business mid-market.”
JPMorgan Chase analyst Sterling Auty said in a note obtained by MarketWatch that the hefty sum of money Intuit is spending on Mailchimp may “raise eyebrows” but shows the company “is not monkeying around” when it comes to growth.
“We believe this is an excellent strategic move as it brings in a nicely profitable asset growing faster than the corporate average and further strengthens Intuit’s overall small business product portfolio,” Auty added.
Investors appeared to agree with Auty’s analysis, sending Intuit stock up 2 percent to $586.56 in early trade Tuesday — outpacing the broader market’s 0.25 percent gains.
The transaction is expected to close before the end of the second quarter in fiscal year 2022, Intuit said.
“Expanding our platform to be at the center of small and mid-market business growth helps them overcome their most important financial challenges,” said Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi. “Adding Mailchimp furthers our vision to provide an end-to-end customer growth platform to help our customers grow and run their businesses, putting the power of data in their hands to thrive.”
Intuit also owns the personal finance apps Mint and Credit Karma.
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