February opens with more closed M&A deals

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Ross Wilkers By Ross Wilkers,
Senior Staff Reporter

By Ross Wilkers

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The strong pace of mergers and acquisitions continues as February opens with a flurry of closed deals and the creation of a new M&A platform.

February is upon us and it begins in the same way we started January: a whole lot of completed transactions in the government market to run through.

Four to be exact were announced on Monday as closed, while a fifth on this list sees a new platform introduced to the sector.

Here is a summary of those deals.

Carlyle Group

  • What was acquired -- IST Research and Two Six Labs, which have combined to form Two Six Technologies.
  • Who the new company is -- Provides cybersecurity, data science and mobile services and deployed products to federal agencies.
  • Who is leading it -- CEO Joe Logue, a former Booz Allen Hamilton executive vice president; and Board Chairman Larry Prior, the former CSRA CEO.
  • Who its customers include -- The Defense Department including its Advanced Research Projects Agency, State Department, Cyber Command, Homeland Security Department and intelligence agencies.
  • Who helped make the deal happen -- Raymond James & Associates was financial adviser to IST Research and Two Six Labs. King & Spalding was legal adviser to Two Six Labs and Holland & Knight LLP was legal adviser to IST Research. Latham & Watkins was legal adviser to Carlyle.
  • Part of the backstory: IST was backed by Blue Delta Capital Partners, the venture firm that invests partial stakes in government contracting and cybersecurity firms.

Intellibridge

  • What was acquired -- Alethix. Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Fairfax, Virginia.
  • Who the target is -- Provides data transmission and processing services, plus enterprise system interoperability support to federal agencies.
  • Who its customers include -- Agriculture Department, Defense Department, Homeland Security Department and Census Bureau.
  • Who helped make the deal happen -- KippsDeSanto was financial adviser to Alethix.
  • The backstory -- This is IntelliBridge’s second deal with the backing of Enlightenment Capital, which unveiled that platform last year. Enlightenment recently completed a pair of successful exits with the sale of 1901 Group to Leidos and the initial public offering of Telos Corp.

General Atomics

  • What was acquired -- Tiger Innovations. Founded in 1997 and headquartered in Herndon, Virginia.
  • Who the target is -- Develops spacecraft and other space systems including satellites for U.S. government agencies.
  • What the buyer sees -- Greater ability to incorporate Tiger Innovations’ customized hardware and software into space and satellite systems.
  • What the product line includes -- Solar array simulators, power control boxes, electronic spectrometers, satellite ground systems, satellite flight software, cubesat prototypes and specialty payloads.
  • What’s next -- Tiger Innovations will become a part of General Atomics’ electromagnetic systems group.

Salesforce

  • What was acquired -- Acumen Solutions, first announced in December and now completed.
  • Who the target is -- Provides professional services to government agencies and businesses on their digital transformations, particularly those that involve Salesforce implementations.
  • Who their customers include -- Veterans Affairs Department, Defense Department, Health and Human Services Department, and Securities and Exchange Commission.
  • What the buyer gets -- Added revenue of $150 million in Salesforce’s next fiscal year and greater skills on the integration front to couple with the product itself.
  • The backstory -- Salesforce snuck in this announcement along with the massive acquisition of Slack.

AE Industrial Partners

  • What they did -- Merged their portfolio companies NuWave Solutions and PCI to form BigBear.ai.
  • Who this new company is -- Focuses on data and the digital spectrum to help defense, intelligence and civilian agencies in their information superiority and decision support efforts.
  • Who is leading it -- Reggie Brothers is CEO after previously leading NuWave, while PCI’s co-founder and former CEO Sean Battle is chief strategy officer.
  • The backstory -- AEI acquired Nuwave in June 2020 and PCI in October 2020, then added BigBear to the former in December of last year.

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