Descartes, the 17th-century French mathematician, built his philosophy around acquiring knowledge. Descartes, the 21st-century logistics business, meanwhile, is building its philosophy around acquiring companies.
Utah-based XPS works directly with e-commerce shippers of all sizes to provide multi-carrier parcel shipping services. The company’s software automatically imports orders, compares carrier rates, provides end-to-end order tracking and prints shipping labels for all major carriers. It also offers a white-label shipping platform to logistics services providers.
What we’ll see in the merger and acquisition space this year
“Combining with XPS adds e-commerce domain expertise, advanced parcel shipping technology and a community of more than 10,000 customers,” said Andrew Roszko, Descartes’ EVP of commercial operations. “Many of today’s small and medium e-commerce retailers will be the major enterprises of tomorrow, and our integrated e-commerce shipping and fulfillment solutions are designed to help these businesses through all phases of growth.”
Now, in what looks to be its largest deal to date, Descartes is folding in XPS for up to $75 million.
“XPS complements our significant recent investments in the e-commerce fulfillment and shipping space,” said Descartes CEO Edward J. Ryan. “We welcome the XPS customers, employees and partners to the Descartes community and, together, look forward to helping the community manage the full life cycle of domestic and international ecommerce shipments.”
The company’s stock is also beginning to rebound following a sluggish start to 2022. It lost about one-third of its value between January and April but has since been trending higher.
