Prophix has announced a CAN$ 10 million debt refinancing provided by BDC Capital and CIBC Innovation Banking. It is the company’s first funding according to Crunchbase. This indicates that it has financed its existing growth through bootstrapping or borrowing, rather than seed funding. Presumably the refinancing will reduce cash flow concerns at the Corporate Performance management vendor and allow it to continue its growth.
It will use the freed up finance to invest in Artificial Intelligence to “Lead the Transformation of FP&A“ according to the press release.
Paul Barber, Prophix CEO and co-founder. “This debt financing will enable us to more quickly scale our organization and invest in key innovations and technologies such as artificial intelligence, that provide more value to our customers and further differentiate Prophix from others like Anaplan and Adaptive.
“We appreciate the confidence shown in our business plan and track record by our financial partners, BDC Capital and CIBC Innovation Banking.”
CPM is a buoyant market with investors flocking to take advantage. Prophix demonstrated accelerated growth in 2018 with a 42% increase in ARR. While it stated an aim to reach C$100 million in revenue, it did not reveal its current ARR. Terms of the deal were not revealed and there appear to be no board changes announced.
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
This is a sensible move as Prophix looks to compete against its larger rivals, many of which recently received funding. Last year market leader Anaplan has a successful IPO, Workday bought Adaptive Insights, Host Analytics and Vena Solutions (in 2019) completed funding rounds. The first of those three made Constellations short list for EPM vendors.
The challenge for Prophix will be competing in the congested mid-market. There are several other players already in this space with Unit4 Prevero seeing success in several verticals. Prophix is holding its annual user Conference this week in Nashville, “Reframe as Usual”. It will be interesting to see what announcements emerge.