A buyout firm is saying carpe diem and seizing the Day…force.
What happened: U.S. PE giant Thoma Bravo is buying HR software company Dayforce in a US$12.3 billion move. If the deal is approved, Dayforce — which was used by 7.6 million global employees last year — will delist from the Toronto and New York stock exchanges.
Catch-up: Like Niagara Falls or basketball, Dayforce is a Canadian-American triumph. Though it’s U.S.-domiciled, it was founded in Toronto as a startup before being acquired by U.S. software provider Ceridian in 2012 (which changed its name to Dayforce in 2024).
- The man who started Dayforce, Toronto’s David Ossip, remains the CEO, with its whole executive suite and one of its headquarters located in Canada’s largest city.
- And it remains active in its birth country, including scoring a contract from the federal government to replace Phoenix, the reviled pay platform for public service workers.
Why it matters: Dayforce will mark another high-profile tech delisting. More than half of the 20 Canadian tech firms that went public on the TSX in 2020 and 2021 have since delisted, including Nuvei, Softchoice, and Magnet Forensics, all of which sold for over $1 billion.
Bottom line: Though Dayforce is a little different from the above companies, having gone public in 2018, it likely had similar reasons for going private — like increased volatility due to higher interest rates, the desire to ditch public earnings reports, debt relief, and access to deeper coffers.—QH
