After a six-month search, Intuit has found a buyer for Quicken, selling the personal finance software business to private-equity firm H.I.G. Capital in a management buyout.
Eric Dunn, the head of Quicken, said H.I.G. shared his passion for the software, which now makes only a minimal contribution to Intuit’s revenue. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
“They are confident, as am I, that Quicken will thrive with increased investment, leading to product improvements and advances that will allow Quicken to continue to serve you well for decades to come,” Dunn told customers Thursday in a blog post. He described himself as a “significant personal investor n the transaction.”
Intuit announced in August it was unloading three parts of its business — Quicken, QuickBase, and Demandforce — to focus on its more profitable QuickBooks small business accounting division and the TurboTax tax preparation group.
“Quicken is a desktop-centric business and it doesn’t strengthen the small business or tax ecosystems,” Intuit chief executive Brad Smith told analysts last year. “Our strategy is focused on building ecosystems and platforms in the cloud.”
In the 12 months preceding the August announcement, Quicken contributed just $51 million to Intuit’s total revenue of nearly $4.2 billion, or slightly more than 1%.
According to Computerworld, Quicken “is software that users love to hate. With years of data in the company’s proprietary format — and few alternatives — they not only feel trapped but also regularly rail about the product.”
But Dunn said the sale to H.I.G. will allow Quicken to double the number of engineers working on the Mac version, which has long lagged behind the Windows edition in features and functionality, and devote more resources to improving the Windows program.
“We all know that Quicken could use some TLC, some tender loving care, to be as great as it can be. I’m very aware that Quicken isn’t perfect,” he said. “Quicken [for Windows] could probably use some attention to the fit and finish, the polish, usability, resilience and reliability.”