Trimble acquires e-Builder to expand its Construction Management Solutions
Trimble has announced the acquisition of privately-held e-Builder, a leading SaaS-based construction program management solution for capital program owners and program management firms. e-Builder extends Trimble’s ability to accelerate industry transformation by providing an integrated project delivery solution for owners, program managers and contractors across the design, construct and operate lifecycle.
e-Builder currently manages more than $300 billion of construction project value and over 200,000 projects from some of the most influential owners in North America. Owners benefit from the e-Builder solution through improved transparency and accountability while contractors benefit from faster payments, increased productivity and improved competitive advantage. The e-Builder solution is uniquely designed to measure and manage every step of the capital project delivery process including planning, design, procurement, construction and operations.
Trimble’s wide range of construction hardware and software solutions significantly improve project cost, schedule and effectiveness—beneficially impacting owners, architects, engineers, and contractors. In construction they have two points of focus, one on civil engineering projects and the other on the construction of buildings and structures. Both will benefit from the e-Builder acquisition. Trimble solutions leverage constructible Building Information Model (BIM) workflows to integrate processes, improve information fidelity, reduce rework, establish transparency and deliver higher productivity. By using Trimble technologies, contractors and owners are realizing substantial reductions in total project cost.
The combination of Trimble and e-Builder accelerates value creation for both owners and contractors by combining e-Builder’s best practice solutions for owners with Trimble’s construction lifecycle solutions, access to contractors and global reach. The combined solution portfolio will accelerate the integration of field operations with enterprise needs, enabling additional productivity gains. The tangible benefits include more consistent on-time and within-budget project delivery that is enabled by improved visibility, clear accountability for outcomes and the ability to convert large volumes of disparate data into actionable workflows and measurable outcomes.
“e-Builder has always recognized that owners play a key role in the construction lifecycle and that their influence will be key to the adoption of transformative construction technology,” said Steven Berglund, president and CEO of Trimble. “Trimble will extend its reach into the owner community by leveraging e-Builder’s presence. In turn, we intend to aggressively bring e-Builder solutions to civil and building contractors and the international market. We see a significant opportunity in leveraging data and intelligence gained through design-construct workflows across the full infrastructure lifecycle. e-Builder’s solutions and, more importantly, its organization provide a strong platform for significant growth.”
“e-Builder’s mission is to improve project execution to make construction faster, less expensive and more reliable,” said Ron Antevy, president and CEO of e-Builder. “The addition of our solutions to Trimble’s broad portfolio extends our collective ability to best support owners and contractors with project delivery and management. e-Builder current and future customers will benefit from Trimble’s construction management expertise, culture of innovation and global reach to take e-Builder solutions to the next level.”
The all cash purchase price of $500 million will be financed through a new $300 million credit facility and cash. The new facility has terms and conditions similar to the existing revolver with a 364 day term.
e-Builder’s reported trailing twelve month revenue is approximately $53 million. In recent years, e-Builder’s revenue growth rate has exceeded 20 percent annually, with greater than 65 percent subscription revenue as a percentage of total revenue. The transaction is expected to be dilutive to Trimble’s first quarter non-GAAP net income per share by $0.01 per share and dilutive to full year 2018 non-GAAP net income per share by $0.02 to $0.03 per share, due to the impact of fair value accounting of e-Builder’s deferred revenue and interest expense. Trimble expects the acquisition to be accretive to 2019 non-GAAP net income per share.
An overview of e-Builder and the strategic rationale for the acquisition is available on Trimble’s Investor Relations website. For a more detailed description of the acquisition and credit agreements see Trimble’s Form 8-K filed with the SEC on February 2, 2018. Management will discuss the acquisition during Trimble’s fourth quarter and full year 2017 earnings call on February 8, 2018.
