Qualtrics International (NasdaqGS:XM) today announced that it will spend $1.125 billion to acquire Clarabridge.
According to the company news release, the all stock transaction will allow Provo, Utah-based Qualtrics to fold Clarabridge's "omnichannel conversational analytics" services into Qualtrics' Experience Management (XM) platform.
The Clarabridge tech allows companies to
"... capture and analyze customer feedback from indirect sources such as social media, emails, support calls, chats and product reviews."
According to Qualtrics CEO, Zig Serafin, the acquisition will
"... give companies even greater power to build deep, trusted relationships with their customers and employees ..."
From the Qualtrics investor presentation, we learn that 85% of data in and around an enterprise is known as "Unstructured Data," including digital chats, tweets, Slack messages, and the like--data that's growing at 55% annually.
This is the market where Clarabridge operates. Such growth is also why the Reston, Virginia-based company is a great acquisition target for Qualtrics.
Conversely, Qualtrics operates in the "Structured Data" marketplace, a market that's growing 22% per year.
Hence, folding Clarabridge into Qualtrics makes a ton of sense.
And as is often the case, the acquisition is subject to judicial review prior to closing.
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