Kinaxis increases retail presence with Rubikloud buy
2020-06-15 17:36 ET - News Release
Mr. John Sicard reports
KINAXIS TO ACQUIRE AI-BASED RETAIL AND CPG DEMAND PLANNING PROVIDER, RUBIKLOUD
Kinaxis Inc. has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Toronto-based Rubikloud, a disruptive, emerging provider of AI solutions that automate supply chain prescriptive analytics and decision-making in the retail and consumer packaged goods (CPG) industries.
Globally recognized retailers and CPG manufacturers in the health and beauty, household and grocery segments use Rubikloud's AI-based products today. Their offerings include demand forecasting and automation to manage and optimize trade promotions, pricing and assortment to drive product demand and dramatically improve financial results. Kinaxis will enhance RapidResponse's demand planning capabilities with the Rubikloud offerings, anticipating initial opportunities in the company's rapidly growing CPG customer base and over time for other industries such as life sciences. The acquisition also offers Kinaxis a springboard into the enterprise retail industry.
"Rubikloud has capabilities and value that we can offer our CPG customers today, leads us into the retail industry with some bellwether accounts, and adds a group of approximately 80 people to an already-impressive AI and machine learning (ML) team here at Kinaxis. Over time, this enhanced group will contribute to new and existing AI-powered capabilities across the full Kinaxis RapidResponse platform and applications," said John Sicard, president and chief executive officer of Kinaxis. "This acquisition reflects the growing importance of AI and ML to power intelligent automation and augment human decision-making to better deliver on customer promises, remove waste and increase resiliency for effective risk management."
Rubikloud's SaaS-based ML offerings empower retail and CPG manufacturers to transform their core operations by improving and automating complex, profit-generating decisions. Rubikloud's proven AI capabilities and intuitive tools enable users to leverage disparate data sources to improve forecast accuracy, site-level allocations, inventory availability and promotion plans by allowing users to run boundless simulations in real time.
"We founded Rubikloud with the belief that purpose-built AI could be used to solve some of the most complex industry problems and we have spent the last seven years building a fantastic product that receives validation from global customers every day," said Kerry Liu, CEO, Rubikloud. "We're excited at the prospect of joining Kinaxis, which helps us bring our innovations to a much broader customer base at a faster pace than on our own. Not only that, being two strong Canadian companies we see great cultural synergy and look forward to working on the complex problems we know RapidResponse and concurrent planning can solve for customers."
Terms of agreement
Kinaxis will acquire Rubikloud for $60-million (U.S.) in an all-cash transaction that is expected to close within 60 days. Based on Rubikloud's current revenue and expense profile, the company's fiscal 2020 revenue and adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) guidance, as reiterated in its May 6, 2020, news release, remains unchanged. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions.
About Kinaxis Inc.
Kinaxis makes software that help enterprises make fast, confident decisions across integrated business planning and the digital supply chain.
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