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Austin-headquartered e-commerce software company BigCommerce Holdings Inc. is reportedly exploring a sale, potentially to a private equity firm, Reuters reported May 7. The report, which cited people familiar with the matter, noted that the company has struggled to compete against Shopify Inc., a much larger Canada-based company.
BigCommerce is reportedly working with Qatalyst Partners to find interested buyers. BigCommerce has not responded to requests for comment by Austin Inno.
The reported buyer search comes just months after BigCommerce CEO Brent Bellm told Inno that it became profitable last year and is working to accelerate growth. However, Reuters noted that BigCommerce has lost 90% of its market value since it went public four years ago. Meanwhile, the company had a couple of rounds of layoffs last year and has continued to battle for market share with Shopify.
Bellm has continued to voice confidence in its effort to shrink the gap between it and Shopify.
"I'm proud that America is fighting and innovating," he said in an interview last month. "And, just frankly, we're leading them in terms of our product capabilities in select parts of the market. I mean, they're much bigger than we are. But when it comes to B2B; when it comes to enterprise and B2C; when it comes to omnichannel [and] international or cross border capabilities, we're ahead of them."
BigCommerce was originally an Australian company founded in 2004 as Interspire Pty. Ltd. It became BigCommerce in 2009 and opened its Austin office, later moving its headquarters here in 2011. After raising nearly $225 million in venture backing from firms including General Catalyst and Goldman Sachs, the company (Nasdaq: BIGC) went public in 2020.
The company ranked No. 37 on the Austin Business Journal's latest list of tech employers, and it's the 29th largest public company headquartered in Austin, according to additional list research. BigCommerce now has about 1,300 employees globally, about a third of whom are based in the Austin area.
BigCommerce's stock increased about 10% on the news. But it was down slightly in trading on May 8 with a per-share price of $6.52 in the afternoon. That's close to its 52-week low of $5.62. It currently has a market cap of $506.5 million. The company's stock took a significant hit earlier this year when SoftBank Group said it had exited its position.
Shopify (NYSE: SHOP), meanwhile, saw its stock price fall significantly on May 8 after releasing its first-quarter earnings report. It was down nearly 20% and trading at $62.06, which sits between its 52-week low of $45.50 and its high point of $91.57. Its market cap was $79.9 billion.
Earlier this week, BigCommerce announced that it appointed Travis Hess as its new president. He was most recently a managing director at Accenture where he led its direct-to-consumer commerce offering and go-to-market strategy. Before that, he was executive vice president at The Stable, a commerce agency that was acquired by Accenture in 2022.
Hess replaces former president Steven Chung, who had been BigCommerce's president since August last year. He is now president at New York-based Starburst, according to his LinkedIn page.
BigCommerce also said this week that it added Thom Armstrong as vice president of Americas enterprise sales. He was previously senior vice president of sales at Stylitics and has held senior sales roles at Amplience, Salesforce and Demandware.
