Bending Spoons to buy collaboration tools maker Miro for $1.36B, 90% less than its 2022 valuation

Bending Spoons will acquire Miro for $1.36 billion in cash, or $1.79 billion of equity value, representing a 92% decline from Miro’s $17.5 billion late-2021 valuation. Miro remains profitable, has roughly $600 million in ARR, $435 million in net cash, 4 million paying users and 100 million total users, but its slower post-pandemic growth and SaaS multiple compression have sharply reduced its exit value. The deal follows Bending Spoons' $1.28 billion Airtable acquisition and underscores weak private-market valuations for mature, formerly high-growth SaaS businesses.

Analysis

The transaction implies an enterprise-value/ARR clearing multiple near 2.3x after adjusting for net cash—an unusually low benchmark for a profitable, enterprise-weighted collaboration asset. That matters less for MSFT, whose distribution lets it monetize collaboration as a retention feature, than for stand-alone application vendors whose valuation rests on seat expansion and premium pricing. Over the next 1-3 months, late-stage private SaaS marks and secondary-market pricing should reset lower for adjacent workflow, design, and knowledge-management assets; this is a negative read-through for FIG and other private comparables rather than a material earnings event for CSCO or MSFT.

The non-obvious issue is that a financial/operational buyer can earn attractive returns at this entry multiple through modest price increases, reduced sales-and-marketing spend, and headcount rationalization—even without renewed growth. That creates a more credible exit route for mature venture-backed software, but at valuations far below prior financing marks; boards may accept such outcomes to avoid a prolonged, uncertain IPO process. For TEAM, the risk is not direct revenue loss but further evidence that point solutions embedded alongside Jira/Confluence have limited independent pricing power once IT procurement shifts to suite consolidation.

Consensus may over-read the sale as a broad public-SaaS multiple warning. Public vendors with durable free cash flow, low churn, and proprietary workflow data can still command materially higher multiples because they offer daily operational lock-in and public-market liquidity. The bearish thesis is falsified if comparable private-company transactions clear above 4x ARR, or if TEAM reports sustained cloud growth acceleration and net revenue retention improvement without incremental sales-and-marketing intensity; either would indicate that this is idiosyncratic governance/ownership timing rather than a sector clearing price.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Do not initiate a directional trade in BSP or FIG: both are not readily investable public tickers, and the disclosed terms alone do not establish a mark for their broader businesses.
• Initiate a 3-6 month relative-value position: long MSFT / short TEAM, sized dollar-neutral, on a 5%+ TEAM relative-strength rally versus MSFT. The thesis is suite-driven procurement favors MSFT’s bundled distribution while TEAM remains more exposed to scrutiny of incremental collaboration-tool spend; target 10-15% relative downside with a 5-7% stop on the spread.
• Maintain an underweight in high-multiple, subscale enterprise-collaboration and workflow software exposures for the next 1-3 months, particularly names dependent on private-market comparables for valuation support. Cover if disclosed private M&A or funding rounds establish transaction values above 4x ARR or if public peer guidance shows reaccelerating seat growth.
• Use CSCO only as a watch item, not a trade: monitor enterprise collaboration bookings and Webex attach metrics in the next earnings release. A measurable improvement in collaboration attach rates would support a tactical long; absent that evidence, the effect is too immaterial to overcome CSCO’s broader networking-cycle drivers.