Canadian company Volaris says Adapt IT’s business, for which it recently completed a takeover, will continue to be run by Adapt CEO Tiffany Dunsdon and her team. Adapt IT was delisted from the JSE after the takeover.
One of the biggest uncertainties surrounding the takeover of Adapt IT, a journey that culminated in a bidding war, was whether Volaris would fully take over the day-to-day running and strategy of the Johannesburg group or allow it to continue as normal — management and strategy intact.
“We really want to get behind Tiffany and the leadership team,” Mike Dufton, portfolio leader at Volaris, said in an interview.
“We see Tiffany, really, as the head of Adapt IT, driving the strategy for what we want to do in SA and beyond. Volaris is there to support her with knowledge, capital, insight from our experience in the past, share knowledge from customers we work with,” Dufton said on Monday.
Volaris, which specialises in acquiring software businesses, has operations in more than 35 countries and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Canada-listed Constellation, a $45bn (R694bn) technology giant.
The company has eight portfolio leaders managing more than 100 companies under its umbrella. Dufton was in charge of the Adapt IT acquisition, and the company now forms part of his portfolio.
Dufton said Volaris’s aim was to help Dunsdon build up Adapt IT’s brand and operations. She can “come to us with her thoughts on how the business should grow and we will support that vision”.
“That’s really what we do with all our businesses. We don’t insert our management into the company. We empower the management that’s in place.”
In September, Dunsdon took over as CEO after the departure of scandal-tainted Adapt IT founder Sbu Shabalala. Though happy to have largely worked in the background over the past decade, she was CEO of InfoWave Holdings when she engineered the merger with Shabalala’s fledgling Adapt IT in 2007 that created the tech firm.
When asked if she still wants to lead the group, Dunsdon told Business Day that she has “a huge appetite” for it.
“I am very happy in the role and energised, as is the rest of my team. We’re very excited to have come to this point. It’s been a tough two years for everybody but we’ve been through a little bit extra,” she said, referring to bids for Adapt IT’s business over the past year.
Over that time the company’s board had been working to complete a tie-up with Volaris after a months-long bidding war with fellow technology player Huge Group. With Adapt IT shareholders having already shown favour for the Volaris R1bn buyout offer, the transaction concluded in December.
Volaris had offered R7 per Adapt IT share and acquired 63.87% of the company.
The acquisition results in a diversified SA software company being backed by a well capitalised leading global technology firm that is keen to support further growth. Adapt IT now represents Volaris’s interests in Africa, where it sees opportunities for growth.
Adapt IT was founded in 1996 and listed on the JSE in 1998. It has grown its customer base to more than 10,000 in 55 countries.
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