– NXN Software is the world’s leading provider of digital asset management systems for the entertainment and 3D-computer-graphics industries
– The company’s products protect and manage digital assets in professional computer-graphics projects across industries. This includes digital production management, which combines digital asset management and project management, and offers productivity, workflow, and time-to-market improvements
– Avid Technology (NASDAQ: AVID) provides digital nonlinear media creation, management and distribution solutions for film, video, audio, animation, games, and broadcast news professionals
– Avid also provides digital audio workstations, mixers, software, and a number of other products for the music market
– The company has nearly 3,000 employees
– NXN’s market leading products – NXN alienbrain VFX, NXN alienbrain Studio, and NXN alienbrain Engineer – extend Avid’s current media asset management offerings with capabilities including infrastructure, configuration, project, and workflow management, as well as complete version control
– The acquisition is an important step for Avid to broaden its video editing offering and further gain access to customers such as Lucas Arts, Pixar and Sony Animation
– The acquisition expands Avid’s leadership in digital asset management by enabling the company’s film and video postproduction, broadcast, and 3D animation customers to leverage the revolutionary workflow capabilities of the acclaimed NXN® alienbrain product line
– Arma Partners was engaged to run a sell-side process for the company
– Through careful positioning of the business, Arma Partners achieved a valuation that reflected the strong technology offering of NXN Software and the long term vision of the business rather than its past financial performance (the company had less than $10m in revenue and is loss-making)
– Arma Partners managed to increase the valuation of the business by over 40% and drove the process from its initiation to closing in less than 3 months