Thoma Bravo recently finalized an agreement to sell administrative educator software maker Frontline Education to Roper Technologies for $3.7 billion.
Frontline Education is a platform built to serve kindergarten through twelfth grade (K-12) teachers and staff across all 50 states. The offerings of this 850-person company include attendance tracking, people management, human resource management services (HRMS), school health management, billing, and more. For the past five years, they've been in a partnership with Thoma Bravo, which originally purchased the firm in a transaction in which financial details were not disclosed.
With Thoma Bravo's guidance, Frontline has expanded its product portfolio from 16 to 30 offerings and increased staff by more than 70%. Holden Spaht, Managing Partner at Thoma Bravo, noted that the firm helped grow Frontline's annual recurring revenue (ARR) and integrate analytics platforms into their software. The all-cash sale to Roper Technologies is expected to close in the fourth quarter, pending customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals. Frontline's management team will stay intact, and its headquarters will remain in Malvern, Pennsylvania.
Roper's hope is that Frontline will complement its existing "Horizon" software offered currently to the educator market, according to Reuters. Horizon is a campus identification card and cashless system service management software. It serves K-12 markets, higher education, teachers, and staff on campuses. After recently divesting its legacy industrial businesses, Roper is looking to pivot seamlessly into the software space. Roper's Chief Executive Officer Neil Hunn told Channel News Asia that the market is undergoing a significant transformation and that the addition of Frontline's software will help with hiring, training, and managing educational staff.
"This acquisition demonstrates Roper's disciplined capital deployment strategy that focuses on identifying high-quality, market-leading technology businesses," Nunn told PR Newswire in a statement. "Frontline is a terrific business with clear niche market leadership."
