Qualtrics


Qualtrics is an experience management company, with co-headquarters in Provo, Utah and Seattle, Washington, in the United States. The company was founded in 2002 by Scott M. Smith, Ryan Smith, Jared Smith and Stuart Orgill.
Qualtrics offers a subscription software platform.
On November 11, 2018, it was announced that Qualtrics would be acquired by SAP for $8 billion. The acquisition was completed on January 23, 2019. On July 26, 2020, SAP announced its intent to take Qualtrics public.

History

Funding & Valuation

In 2012, the company received a $70 million Series A investment from Sequoia Capital and Accel, generally considered two of the top venture capital firms in the country. It was the largest joint investment to date by these two firms. In September 2014, Sequoia Capital and Accel returned in Series B funding, led by Insight Partners worth $150 million, a record for a Utah-based company, and valuing the company $1 billion. In April 2017 Qualtrics received a Series C investment round of $180 million from returning investors Accel, Sequoia Capital, and Insight Venture Partners. The Series C was raised at a $2.5 billion pre-money valuation.

Filing for IPO

On October 19, 2018, Qualtrics filed their S-1 registration statement with the intention of raising gross proceeds of $200 million through an Initial Public Offering of its Class B shares. At the time, the company listed 9,000 global customers. The company was meant to be listed on the NASDAQ exchange under the ticker "XM" in reference to their flagship experience management product, the Qualtrics XM Platform.
Plans for the IPO were scrapped when it was announced in November 2018 that Qualtrics would be acquired by SAP.

Awards & ranking

In 2016, Qualtrics was ranked #12 on the Forbes Cloud 100 list, moving to #6 in 2017. In March 2020, Qualtrics' CoreXM platform was named a 2020 gold winner by the Edison Awards in the Applied Technology category.

Revenue

Qualtrics reported revenue of $190.6 million in 2016 and $289.9 million in 2017 representing year over year growth of 52%. In 2016, Qualtrics reported an overall net loss of $12 million with free cash flow of $3.4 million. In 2017, Qualtrics reported a $2.6 million net profit with free cash flow of $21.3 million.

Acquisitions

In May 2016 Qualtrics acquired statistical analysis startup Statwing for an undisclosed sum. Statwing was a San Francisco-based company that created point-and-click software for advanced statistical analysis.
In April 2018 Qualtrics acquired for an undisclosed sum. Delighted had over 1,500 customers at the time of acquisition.

Acquisition by SAP SE

In November 2018, SAP announced its intent to acquire Qualtrics. SAP acquired all outstanding shares of Qualtrics for US$8 billion in an all cash deal. SAP secured €7 billion in financing. At the time it was announced, the Qualtrics acquisition was SAP's second-biggest purchase ever behind the $8.3 billion acquisition of travel and expense management firm Concur in 2014. The acquisition was formally closed January 23, 2019.

Initial public offering (IPO)

On 26 July 2020, SAP announced its intents to take Qualtrics public through an IPO in the United States. The decision to go public was made due to Qualtrics' performance since the acquisition which outperformed SAP's expectations in excess of 40 percent. According SAP's announcement, SAP will remain the main shareholder. "A final decision on the IPO and its conditions and timing" has not been made and "is pending and subject to market conditions."

Research

Quantitative statistical analysis performed with Qualtrics is cited in a number of professional and academic journals. Qualtrics became the first employee management platform measuring employee experiences through key metrics powered by predictive intelligence. Researchers often use Qualtrics as a survey tool and combine it with SPSS to analyze their survey data on employee experiences and many other types of survey data.