Bachman Information Systems acquires Cadre Technologies

Stratagem’s buy side strategy and negotiating work surfaced the deal, which doubled Bachman’s revenue at minimal dilution

After a long and successful history that included an IPO, Bachman fell on some challenging times. Its dominant position in mainframe-based tools for modeling application development suffered as the market increasingly moved to distributed systems. Further, user preferences were changing from an entity relationship methodology to that of object-oriented programming. We were hired to help the company use strategic partnering to reignite growth and enhance the company’s competitive position.

We began by collaborating with the executive team to identify and profile possible expansion categories and companies within those categories. We then cross-referenced the profiles against Bachman’s own strengths and weaknesses. We introduced Cadre as a candidate because Cadre would offer an immediate financial boost, plus provide an exciting new object-oriented modeling solution. The deal doubled Bachman’s size but only resulted in 20% dilution to existing shareholders. The deal, valued at $40 million, was very well received with Bachman’s share price increasing 22% on the announcement, adding roughly $40 million to its market capitalization, thus paying for the deal.