Online business expense-management company Concur has been on a dealmaking tear this year, and isn’t slowing down just yet. Today, the Redmond, WA-based company (NASDAQ: [[ticker:CNQR]]) announced it would purchase London’s GlobalExpense for about $19.7 million. Performance incentives could add another $3.3 million to the price.
From Concur’s description, GlobalExpense sounds like a pretty similar company. Concur said the pickup boosts the size of its European operations by a third, although it wasn’t clear from the company’s release whether that meant customers, revenues, employees, or something else. Concur did say that it expects the GlobalExpense acquisition to increase revenues by about $5 million for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2012.
Concur has been expanding its footprint in recent months, particularly overseas. In January, the company acquired San Francisco-based TripIt, a consumer and business online travel-planning service, and announced a joint venture with SunBridge Corporation to establish Concur Japan. In mid-April, Concur said it was investing $40 million in a minority stake in Cleartrip, a privately held online travel-booking service in India, and said it would open an office in that country.
In a note today on the GlobalExpense acquisition, D.A. Davidson analysts John Kraft and Douglas Greiner said more deals could follow for Concur, noting the company reported nearly $570 million in cash in its last quarterly report. “This acquisition is not surprising; it clearly makes strategic sense and we expect more like it,” Kraft and Greiner wrote.
The recent spate of acquisitions and investments are longer-term plays that won’t drive immediate revenue or profits, the analysts wrote. They also noted that international operations account for more than 10 percent of Concur’s revenues. Concur expects the deal to close in its fourth quarter.
