Coupa Lands Trade Extensions Buy

Coupa announced plans to acquire Trade Extensions to augment its strategic sourcing offerings.

Reports said the corporate spend management company will acquire Trade Extensions, a company that operates in the eSourcing and strategic sourcing space, for $45 million — $41 million in cash and $4 million in stock issued to employees, according to reports. Trade Extension is used by several high-profile companies, including McKinsey and other consultancies.

It’s not the first acquisition Coupa made since going public last year. In January the firm said it reached a deal to acquire Spend360, a U.K.-based digital data management company that operates in the data analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning space linked to corporate finance and procurement. That deal sees Spend360’s offerings integrated into the Coupa platform.

But as Coupa is looking to make strategic acquisitions and strengthen its service offerings, the company hit a speed bump last month when the firm was hit by a data breach that exposed IRS W-2 payroll forms of its workers.

“A scammer impersonated our chief executive officer and requested that payroll information [Form W-2] for the 2016 tax year be sent via email,” Coupa said in a letter sent to employees and seen by media. Reports said employee data including names, employee IDs, Social Security numbers and other information was compromised as a result. Coupa had 652 employees as of the time the news of the data breach emerged.

“Coupa was one of numerous companies recently targeted by this ‘phishing’ scam,” the company said in a statement. “Upon awareness of the scam, we immediately mitigated the isolated incident and implemented measures to protect affected individuals. We have not seen any evidence that any data has actually been misused. The privacy and protection of our employee data is a matter we take very seriously.”