Oracle will acquire NetSuite for about $9.3 billion, or $109 per share in an all-cash deal, the companies announced Thursday. Both Oracle and NetSuite’s cloud service offerings aimed at enterprise customers will continue to operate and “coexist in the marketplace forever,” according to a statement by Oracle CEO Mark Hurd.
Hurd called NetSuite and Oracle’s offerings “complementary” in the release, adding that Oracle intends to continue to invest in the engineering and distribution aspects of both company’s products going forward.
Eighteen-year-old NetSuite claims a dominant position in the cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) space, which includes offerings to help businesses track supply and demand, inventory, accounting, customer relationships (CRM) and HR. The ERP industry has been an active space for M&A and general consolidation over the past few years, and Oracle in general has been an aggressive acquirer of smaller companies throughout 2016, with recent pick-ups including Opower and Textura.
Oracle’s acquisition of NetSuite dwarfs its previous 2016 acquisitions in total deal value, though it still ranks below the all-time leader – PeopleSoft, which Oracle acquired for a heady $10.3 billion way back in 2004, when such stratospheric values were even more uncommon.
While their service offerings are similar, NetSuite offers Oracle access to companies sized smaller than its traditional clientele, and could also give it some additional competitive edge in taking on primary rival Salesforce.
