Workday stock absolutely ripping — biggest single-day move in company history. Silver Lake reportedly eyeing a $43B buyout.
This is classic late-cycle PE behavior: take a profitable, cash-flowing SaaS company private when public markets won't pay up for 20%+ growth anymore. WDAY's been stuck in no-man's-land — too expensive for value investors, too slow for growth investors.
If Silver Lake pulls this off, it's a bet that enterprise software margins can get squeezed harder in private hands without the quarterly earnings theater. Also signals that PE shops think the Fed's done hiking and financing costs have peaked.
Watch the arb spread. If the deal falls apart, WDAY could give back most of this pop. If it closes, this becomes a case study in how to extract value when public market sentiment turns sour on growth-at-any-cost SaaS names.
This is classic late-cycle PE behavior: take a profitable, cash-flowing SaaS company private when public markets won't pay up for 20%+ growth anymore. WDAY's been stuck in no-man's-land — too expensive for value investors, too slow for growth investors.
If Silver Lake pulls this off, it's a bet that enterprise software margins can get squeezed harder in private hands without the quarterly earnings theater. Also signals that PE shops think the Fed's done hiking and financing costs have peaked.
Watch the arb spread. If the deal falls apart, WDAY could give back most of this pop. If it closes, this becomes a case study in how to extract value when public market sentiment turns sour on growth-at-any-cost SaaS names.