Sydney’s Houden family behind McDonald’s app worth more than $100m
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The deal comes amid a flurry of M&A in the software sector, which has seen the likes of Whispir, Altium and Ansarada become takeover targets.
Shares in Task, which makes point of sale and loyalty software for customers including Guzman y Gomez, Starbucks and Retail Food Group, jumped to 93 per cent to 78¢ on Monday.
Dan Houden is chief executive of Task Group.
Task arrived on the ASX after it was acquired by New Zealand marketing software company Plexure Group, the digital name behind the McDonald’s app, for $120 million in October 2021. The deal gave Task’s shareholders 43 per cent ownership in Plexure.
As part of the merger, early Task employees were given around $20 million worth of stock, or around 4 per cent of the combined company.
Dan Houden, who has taken over running the family business alongside his brother Dean, said the merger invited a wave of interest from potential acquirers.
“We embarked on the turnaround of Plexure and started to get a little bit of attention from a bunch of multinationals… I said, ‘look, I’m servicing a plane while it’s in the air, let’s get through this’,” the CEO said.
Since then, the company achieved a net profit of $NZ400,000 ($370,000) last financial year, narrowing from a loss of $NZ24.3 million a year earlier, and renegotiated a five-year deal with McDonald’s across its international markets.
“After that was completed, we looked at what the next phase of growth looked like… and that resulted in this deal that we announced today.”
PAR is a $US1.22 billion ($1.84 billion) company that makes hardware and software used in more than 70,000 restaurants in 110 countries.
Mr Houden said joining forces with a much larger global player would help Task grow.
“It offers Task a better base on which to achieve its international ambitions, provides a strong group with significant opportunities for our employees and provides certainty for our shareholders who have supported the growth of Task to become a meaningful player in the global retail software market,” he said.
