Cortex Bought Up By Drillinginfo

Cortex, a provider of accounts payable and accounts receivable solutions for the oil and gas sector, has agreed to be acquired by Drillinginfo, a press release said on Thursday (Feb. 21).

Genstar Capital, a private equity firm and investor of Drilling Info Holdings, announced the closure of the acquisition, marking the firm’s fifth add-on acquisition since Genstar first acquired Drillinginfo last July.

Drillinginfo, which targets the energy sector with data analytics and Software-as-a-Service solutions, will integrate Cortex’s AP and AR automation technologies after previously acquiring Oildex, another energy market-targeting company that provides business automation software.

“When we acquired Drillinginfo last year, we said we would build the business and drive growth, in part by expanding service offerings through selective acquisitions to enhance its workflow, analytics and data solutions,” said Genstar Managing Director Eli Weiss in a statement. “Our goal is to create the leading software service in the energy ecosystem, and we are well on the way.”

Weiss added that the acquisitions made by Genstar to integrate into Drillinginfo have so far been able to expand the company’s service offerings for the energy sector.

“We are still in the early innings of a technology revolution in the energy industry, and as a result of these and other initiatives, there is increasing separation between Drillinginfo and the competition,” Weiss said.

Earlier this week, Cortex announced that it had agreed to a $45.7 million acquisition deal, at about $4.55 per share.

The takeover follows last October’s announcement that Cortex itself would expand via M&A activity, having acquired Powervision for about $7 million. That deal saw the integration of Powervision’s electronic document management and workflow management software into Cortex’s offering.

“I believe this transaction is transformational for Cortex and its stakeholders,” said Cortex CEO and President Joel Leetzow in a statement at the time. “The combining of these technologies, similar cultures and customer-centric values has been a long time coming in our customers’ eyes, and with their continual support, we will now be providing a single source to our clients that has historically required our customers to use two vendors, two support numbers and have two budgets for a solution that has always worked great together.”