05/18/2021

Clarivate to Acquire ProQuest

The transaction may result in stronger products

Yesterday’s news that Clarivate will acquire ProQuest, valued at $5.3 billion, is the largest transaction in recent memory in the scholarly information sector. Both companies are intermediaries — they each work extensively with publishers and libraries — and each has extensive interests in discovery, a lynchpin service in the research ecosystem.

Will this transaction result in dramatically strengthened products and improved services for researchers, as its proponents foresee? Or will it result in information enclosure, lock-in, service deterioration and price increases, as detractors forewarn? One thing is for certain: In Clarivate CEO Jerre Stead’s proclamation that “enterprise software is the fastest growing library market,” we can see the monetization of Lorcan Dempsey’s wry observation that “workflow is the new content.”

Much about this transaction comes as no surprise. Since it went public, Clarivate has been pursuing an acquisitions-fueled growth strategy, including the purchase of CPA Global for its intellectual property business. At the same time, ProQuest has been bulking up, most recently through its acquisition of Ex Libris and Innovative, and many suspected that its private owners were seeking an exit strategy. ProQuest is largely an academic library vendor with 92 percent of its $876 million in revenue recurring or reoccurring, “a 100 percent renewal rate among [its] top 2500 customers” and a 29 percent EBITDA. 

Please select this link to read the complete article from The Scholarly Kitchen.