👉 Background: WiseTech Global is the ASX-listed logistics software company founded in 1994. It does all those unsexy logistics activities like helping with supply chain management, customs clearance, and forwarding services. The last 12 months have been rocky for WiseTech after its founder Richard White was accused of bullying as well as inappropriate conduct at work.

👉 What happened: Now, WiseTech has made its biggest acquisition of all time and acquired a US-publicly-listed supply chain management company called E2open. E2open has also had a testy couple of years as its market cap fell lower than its debt load. But that hasn’t stopped WiseTech swooping in with a $2.1 billion USD acquisition.

👉 What else: Despite being quite an opportunistic buy, this acquisition is three times larger than WiseTech’s next biggest acquisition. So it’s a big step-up in WiseTech’s aggressive acquisition strategy, especially with so much going on internally at the company right now.

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What's the key learning?

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💡While small deals can glide under the radar, big ones demand a spotlight. Over the past decade, WiseTech has acquired more than 55 companies. These have mainly been funded through profits and smaller investments.

💡But, his deal is a totally different style of acquisition. Firstly, it’s the biggest acquisition WiseTech’s ever done - more than three times bigger than any deal before it. And they’re taking on $3 billion USD in new debt to fund the deal. That means a big shift in risk profile because they are not only paying for the acquisition... but also interest repayments on the debt.

💡So, when companies go all-in on buying bigger companies, the stakes get higher. And with the spotlight on WiseTech for other reasons right now, it will need to prove that this acquisition was worth it.