When a deal gets sweetened by roughly $300 million, most people typically sit-up and take notice — at least we do here at Deseret Business Watch.

Case in point, mega private equity firm, Vista Equity Partners, announced this week that it has bolstered its bid to acquire Draper-based Pluralsight (NASDAQ:PS) to approximately $3.8 billion.

The jump in the total purchase price of Pluralsight follows the disclosure that Vista will now pay $22.50 per share of Pluralsight’s outstanding shares, up from an initial offering of $20.26/share. That’s an increase of 11% and is 38% higher than the 30-day average price of Pluralsight shares before Vista extended its original offer.

Both boards have approved the revised tender offer, which allowed shareholders to begin tendering (aka, selling) their shares to Vista on March 10th.

Presuming a majority of the Pluralsight shares are tendered to Vista, the acquisition is expected to close in the second quarter of 2021.

It’s my understanding that once the acquisition is completed, Pluralsight will become a private company wholly owned by Vista, essentially turning Pluralsight back into a unicorn once again.

New Airline Breeze Expects to Begin Flying this Summer

The U.S. Department of Transportation has given Breeze Airways the greenlight to begin flying this summer.

Breeze marks the fifth airline founded or co-founded by aviation industry genius, David Neeleman:

Morris Air,
WestJet,
JetBlue Airways,
Brazil-based Azul, and now
Breeze.

Though born in Brazil, David was raised in Utah and attended the University of Utah.

According to this Fox Business report, Breeze plans to focus on primarily underserved mid-sized markets in the southern regions of the United States. And although there is conflict in various news reports about the official headquarters for Breeze (whether in Darien, Connecticut or Salt Lake City), at a minimum it appears that the airline’s primary base of operations will be in SLC.

According to Crunchbase, Breeze has raised over $87 million in funding. Additionally, the company has announced it has signed initial leases for over 60 planes.

Belong Homes to Build Second HQ in Salt Lake City

An interesting SaaS company out of San Mateo, California has announced it plans to open a second headquarters in Salt Lake City.

Belong Homes announced on Monday that it had closed on a $40 million Series B round of funding.

With that funding, Belong plans to open a new HQ in SLC with 100 employees on the ground in the State of Deseret.

Here’s a great write-up about Belong by Art Raymond of the Deseret News.

MX Hires IPO Veteran as its CFO

In the January 25, 2021 issue of Deseret Business Watch I wrote the following:

“When a #VentureCapital-backed company announces it has hired a legit, world class Chief Financial Officer, you can bet that’s a good sign the company is preparing to raise some significant moola — whether via private or public markets.”

At the time I was writing about the fact that Lehi-based Pattern had hired a highly qualified person as its Chief Financial Officer: Jason Beesly.

Today, I’m writing about Lehi-based MX which this week announced it has hired Brian Kinion as its CFO.

Brian Kinion, new CFO of MX. Photo provided by MX, but edited for space.

Brian was the CFO that took Upwork through the IPO process, and he has previously served as CFO and/or VP Finance for such companies as

Upwork,
Marketo,
SuccessFactors,
Actelion Pharmaceuticals, and
CoTherix.

So … is MX fixin’ to get ready for an Initial Public Offering? Either that, or it’s prepping to get bought.

Hang on, MX Nation!

Other News Items of Note from This Week

What follows below are six additional Noteworthy News Items taken from the breaking news announcements that hit our radar this past week from Utah’s business community, news items we thought you might find worthwhile if not also intriguing.

Case in point —

HealthEquity Acquires Luum

I last wrote about Draper-based HealthEquity in the February 22 issue of Deseret Business Watch when it closed on a $400 million secondary offering by selling new shares to the public. Well … HealthEquity is back in the news as it announced this week it has acquired Seattle-based Luum. With the acquisition, HealthEquity will be able to begin helping its over 100,000 client businesses navigate the Human Resource challenges associated with Work-From-Home and Hybrid-Office-Home work settings, both of which have become highly critical during the Covid-19 crisis.

MyHeritage Acquired for $600 Million

This importance of this news announcement bounced right past me in late February because it involved an Israel-headquartered company: MyHeritage. Except I had forgotten that 10 years ago that this Israeli company had acquired two Utah-based genealogy/family history firms: FamilyLink.com and WorldVitalRecords.com. So … the fact that MyHeritage was acquired recently for $600 million by private equity firm, Francisco Partners, bodes well for the Utah employees/shareholders of MyHeritage.

Southern California-based Scorpion Plans 1,000-Person Operation in Utah

The Governor’s Office of Economic Development of Utah announced this week with Valencia, California-based Scorpion that this unique marketing and sales agency plans to open operations in Utah and hire 1,000+ people in the State of Deseret. Under terms of the agreement, if Scorpion holds up its end of the bargain, it will quality for post-performance tax credits of nearly $3.4 million over a five-year timeline. If you don’t know Scorpion, I invite you to check them out; as someone who has worked in the marketing consulting/agency field for over 25 years, I think they have a very interesting business model.

Dental Intelligence Acquires Modento

Pleasant Grove-based Dental Intelligence announced on Friday that it has acquired Modento (of Holladay, Utah). No financial terms of the deal were released. But Dental Intelligence says it expects that Modento products will help it expand its practice management offerings to professionals in the dental industry. BTW: Dental Intelligence closed on a $34 million Series A round of funding in September 2019.

Utah is No. 1 — Yawn — Again

It’s almost getting tiresome … another high-profile ranking or list is published and Utah is at (or near) the top once again. In this instance, it’s the 2021 U.S. Best States ranking by U.S. News & World Report that names Utah’s economy as No. 1 in the nation. Additionally, the State of Deseret also landed as the No. 3 overall top state in the country (behind Washington and Minnesota at Numbers 1 and 2, respectively). Props, BTW, to WA and MN.

Rio Tinto to begin Recovering Tellurium at its Kennecott Copper Mine in SL County

Last but not least (especially for those concerned about mining in the state of Utah), Rio Tinto has announced it will begin recovering (aka, extracting) the mineral tellurium from its Kennecott Copper Mine in Salt Lake County. Tellurium is a byproduct of copper smelting and is a critical component in the manufacturing of solar panels. Rio Tinto expects to be able to recover/extract ~20 tons of tellurium from the Kennecott Mine annually once such operations begin in the 4th Quarter of 2021.

ICYMI: The “Why Rural Utah Isn’t Blossoming Yet” Feature Story

Consider this a postscript, but on Tuesday I took a deep-dive into Rural Economic Development in Utah. And what I discovered concerned me, significantly. Hence, if you haven’t read this yet, I invite you to check out this first of an ongoing series on this topic here: “Why Rural Utah Isn’t Blossoming Yet.” Thank you.

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Hashtags this week: #deseret #business #deseretbusinesswatch #utah #news #utahnews #utahbusiness #utahbusinessnews #venturecapital #vc #fundraising #raisingmoney #familyhistory #genealogy #privateequity #acquisition #acquire #dental #dentistry #mining #tellurium #copper #solar #solarpanels #rural #ruralutah #economicdevelopment #ruraleconomicdevelopment #utaheconomicdevelopment #airline #saas #cfo #ipo #initialpublicoffering #publicoffering #realestate #propertymanagement #homes #homebuying #homepurchasing #hsa #hsas #healthsavingsaccounts

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About the Author

David Politis is a Marketing Mercenary, which is a fancy way of saying that organizations and individuals hire him to solve their marketing problems. To learn more, please feel free to visit David’s LinkedIn Profile or the website for his business: The David Politis Company. If you have a story idea for him (or would just like to connect), you can reach him at me@davidpolitis.com.

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Pluralsight, Breeze, Belong, MX and More (The…