Robinhood completes $140M acquisition in first deal post IPO

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Brokerage app Robinhood has concluded a deal to acquire investment comms company Say Technologies, in its first acquisition post-IPO, according to an announcement from the firm this week.

The all-cash deal values Say Technologies at $140 million, and points to a direction of travel for Robinhood towards investing in peripheral technologies and companies in and around the brokerage and corporate sectors.

Say Technologies was founded in 2017 with the mission of improving shareholder engagement by providing access to easier, more efficient communications. The company provides broker-dealers with improved technologies for processing proxy statements sharing information from companies with their investors, as a means of providing adequate information for shareholder voting.

Through its Q&A platform, Say also enables shareholders to take part in earnings events and other corporate meetings, which the company says improves the quality of decision making by company investors, through providing access to more information.

Say Technologies co-founder and CEO Alex Lebow said the company’s aim was to strengthen communication between companies and their shareholders.

“We founded Say to give investors a better way to engage with the companies they own, and to give companies tools to better understand and access their investors. As part of the Robinhood family, we’ll be able to further our goal of creating a new ecosystem of ownership and engagement to benefit all investors and companies.”

The deal comes immediately following Robinhood’s IPO, which kicked off on July 29. The opening day of trading saw company shares slashed from their list price, though there has been some moderate recovery in the days since.

With the purchase of Say Technologies, Robinhood will be aiming to consolidate its position in the broker-dealer space, as well as diversify its operations into related services and sectors.

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