Bending Spoons To Acquire Brightcove in an All-cash Transaction Valued at Approximately $233 Million

Bending Spoons, a Milan-based mobile app development company, announced plans to acquire Brightcove in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $233 million. Brightcove shareholders will receive $4.45 per share in cash for each share of Brightcove common stock, with the deal expected to close in the first half of 2025. This deal is a natural progression for the company, and over the past 18 months, I spoke to multiple PE companies that were looking to take Brightcove private. It was only a matter of time before this happened.

While Brightcove has struggled to grow revenue over the past four years, it has a clean balance sheet and has projected a non-GAAP loss from operations of $0.1M — $1.1M for 2024. The company ended Q3 with $27M in cash and cash equivalents. Brightcove’s 2024 revenue guidance is $197.7M – $198.7M, so Bending Spoons is valuing the company at about 1.2x projected 2024 revenue. Brightcove’s 2023 revenue was $201.1M, 2022 revenue was $211.1M, and 2021 revenue was $211.09M.

If the acquisition goes through, this won’t be Bending Spoons’s first company in its portfolio tied to video. Earlier in the year, they acquired StreamYard (also known as Hopin) and previously acquired Evernote, WeTransfer, Issuu, Filmic, and Meetup. Earlier this year, Bending Spoons raised $155 million in its latest equity financing round, giving them a post-money valuation of $2.55 billion. It raised $340M in 2022, and earlier this year, Bending Spoons CEO and Co-Founder said the company had raised over $500M to date. In 2022, Bending Spoons announced it surpassed $100 million in annual revenue, and during a 2024 media interview, the CEO disclosed the company’s revenues were $392M in 2023 and expected to surpass $500M in revenue for 2024.

While it’s unknown what Bending Spoons’ plan is for Brightcove, the company has a history of mass layoffs and shutting down US operations for companies it acquires. After acquiring Evernote, Bending Spoons closed its operations in the US and Chile, laying off almost all the staff in those areas, and moved the business to Europe. After acquiring WeTransfer, bending Spoons laid off 75% of its employees. After Bending Spoon’s acquisition of Filmic, they laid off the entire staff, and after acquiring Meetup, they moved operations to Europe, resulting in mass layoffs.

Much has been written about how Bending Spoons regularly cuts the employee headcount of companies it acquires to operate them profitably and have a clear, tight product focus. While that’s not good for the employees of the companies it acquires, it’s simple business economics. While I have no insight into how Bending Spoons might staff Brightcove after the acquisition, I expect them to do a large round of layoffs as there will be much job overlap from the previous companies they have acquired. In a 2024 interview, the CEO stated that Bending Spoons had 300-400 employees. At the end of 2023, Brightcove had 671 employees.