Alteryx Reportedly Seeks Sale Amid Channel Leadership Change

Alteryx is reportedly open to selling to private equity firms, but it ultimately may decide to not sell.

About a week after transitioning to a new channel chief, publicly traded analytics cloud platform vendor Alteryx is reportedly seeking to sell itself.

The Irvine, Calif.-based vendor has worked with investment bank Qatalyst Partners to explore a sale after shares lost almost half their value over the prior 12 months, according to a Reuters report. Despite the fall, Alteryx’s market value came in at $2.2 billion.

Alteryx is open to selling to private equity firms, but it ultimately may decide to not sell, Reuters reported. The vendor went public in 2017 and has more than 8,300 customers.

[RELATED: Alteryx Leverages Generative AI To Expand Analytics Platform Capabilities]

Alteryx Reportedly Explores Sale

CRN has reached out to Alteryx about the potential sale.

Alteryx has about 400 channel partners worldwide, according to CRN’s 2023 Channel Chiefs.

The vendor’s stock decline comes despite a revamped partner program last year and investment in generative artificial intelligence (GenAI).

Alteryx shares traded at about $34 a share after hours Wednesday, up about 11 percent from market close Tuesday.

Q2 Loss

During Alteryx’s August earnings call for its second fiscal quarter – which ended June 30 – CEO Mark Anderson said the vendor delivered $188 million in revenue that quarter, according to a transcript.

That revenue was up 4 percent year over year, but still led to an operating loss of $30 million. And though it was better than Alteryx forecasted, annualized recurring revenue (ARR) of $890 million was less than forecasted, even though it was still 22 percent higher year over year.

“While we exceeded our outlook on both revenue and non-GAAP operating loss, our Q2 financial results fell short of our expectations,” Anderson said, according to the call transcript. “We’ve taken swift action to identify areas for improvement, as well as opportunities to enhance execution going forward.”

As part of the turnaround strategy, the CEO said Alteryx would initiate “additional cost savings initiatives in the second half of the year.”

“This includes elimination of most open positions, scaling back spending, areas of reorganization, additional performance management, and headcount reductions,” Anderson said. “We expect these cost-saving efforts to generate an annualized cost savings of over $30 million.”

In April, Alteryx announced layoffs of about 11 percent of employees, mostly in the sales and marketing and general and administrative organizations.

In the August earnings call, Anderson said he was bringing in new leaders for North America sales and the partners and alliances team. The vendor would also add more deal scrutiny to the sales process and “coaching and training on how to navigate deals in the current economic environment.”

Anderson also told analysts on the call that “partners continue to be a core pillar of our go-to-market strategy, unlocking access to decision-makers and IT and reducing friction in the sales motion.”

“Partners played a role in over three-quarters of our top 20 new logo and expansion deals with key contributions from Presidio, Slalom, and EY, among others,” Anderson said, according to the transcript. “With our new leadership, we look forward to working even closer with our partners to build tighter and more consistent engagement programs.”

New Alteryx Channel Chief

On Aug. 28, Scott Van Valkenburgh became Alteryx’s channel chief – officially, the company’s senior vice president of global alliances and channels, according to a statement from Alteryx.

In a statement to CRN last month, the vendor confirmed that former channel chief Barb Huelskamp – the architect of the new partner program and a member of CRN’s “most powerful women of the channel 2023 – was no longer with Alteryx.

Huelskamp also updated her LinkedIn account to show she left Alteryx after working there for almost two years.

“Barb is no longer with Alteryx,” the vendor said in the August statement to CRN. “Many of Alteryx’s partners had the pleasure of working alongside Barb as she rearchitected the partner program. We appreciate her leadership and the impactful foundation she left in the Global Alliances and Channels organization as we transition leadership to Scott on Aug. 28.”

Van Valkenburgh joined Alteryx after more than six years with Genpact, according to his LinkedIn account. He left Genpact with the title of senior vice president of worldwide alliances and channel sales leader.

In his new role, Van Valkenburgh will “lead Alteryx’s global partner strategy and execution” and “focus on accelerated enablement of Alteryx’s global partner ecosystem and partner solution development to maximize the value of the Alteryx platform for customers,” according to a company statement announcing his appointment.