Squarespace Becomes Private Company With $7.2 Billion Permira Deal

Squarespace is becoming a private company, with its new owner offering a more generous deal.

The website-building platform had announced plans to merge with private equity firm Permira in a $6.4 million deal.

Now, Permira has sweetened the deal in a transaction worth $7.2 billion, Squarespace announced Monday (Sept. 9), after the amended arrangement got the approval of a special committee of the company board.

“Our core focus has been maximizing value and certainty for the unaffiliated stockholders,” said Michael Fleisher, the committee’s chair. “This transaction is the result of a deliberate and thoughtful process and ultimately represents a great outcome that is in the best interest of Squarespace and all of its stockholders.”

“This best and final offer allows Squarespace stockholders to capture immediate and certain value for their investment,” added David Erlong, partner at Permira. “By tendering their shares, Squarespace stockholders can act directly to accept the compelling value of this offer.”

PYMNTS Intelligence has found that close to half of all small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in the United States use Squarespace for their online sales and operations.

A little more than 46%of SMBs use the platform, with 28.2% saying that it is their most used platform, according to “Main Street Health Q4 2023: eCommerce Protects Main Street SMBs’ Bottom Line in a Cooling Market,” a collaboration between PYMNTS Intelligence and Enigma.

The company reported in February that it had exceeded $1 billion in revenue in the fourth quarter of 2023, and in October announced the addition of Squarespace Payments, a native payment solution that allows merchants to accept payments directly through the platform rather than having to connect a third-party payment provider.

“By putting ourselves at the center of the transaction, there are a lot of things that we can solve for our customers,” Dan Chandre, Squarespace vice president, head of Acuity and payments, told PYMNTS’ Karen Webster in an interview posted at the time.

The company’s deal with Permira comes as American private equity companies have invested $162 billion in anticipation of a revival in deal-making, according to a report last month from the Financial Times (FT).

“The deal market is back,” said Scott Nuttall, the co-head of KKR, one of the larger private equity outfits. “This year, we not only have an open market, we have pent-up supply of deals … coming to markets. So we are optimistic.”