Another done deal by Oasis Partners

Australia’s software development sector is one of the fastest-growing parts of the business landscape. The market reached an estimated AUD $5.4 billion in 2025 and is forecast to grow to around AUD $24.2 billion by 2034 [1] — driven by accelerating cloud adoption, enterprise digital transformation, and the rapid, sector-wide push to build AI capability into existing platforms [2]. Demand isn’t just growing. It’s changing shape.

That shift creates an unusual dynamic for owners of established software businesses. The same investment that secures a company’s long-term relevance — new AI tooling, modernised platforms, retrained teams — can, in the short term, make its numbers look softer. For a business owner weighing an exit, that raises an important question: is it the right time to sell my business?

A Market Where Reinvestment Is the Norm, Not the Exception

One of the defining features of the software sector right now is that almost every credible operator is mid-transformation. AI is not a future consideration for these businesses — it’s a current cost line. Legacy platforms are being modernised. Delivery models are shifting to the cloud. This is healthy, necessary evolution. But it means that conventional, backward-looking valuation metrics — a multiple of last year’s earnings — increasingly fail to capture what a software business is actually worth.

For buyers who understand the sector, this isn’t a red flag. It’s an opportunity to acquire capability and client relationships.  For buyers who don’t, it looks like decline. Finding the former, and helping them see the business clearly, is where a well-run process earns its keep.

CIBIS: A Case in Point

A recent example is our client CIBIS, a specialist developer of enterprise software ecosystems, custom middleware, and cloud automation platforms serving clients across a range of durable industry sectors.

Like many software businesses navigating this environment, CIBIS was in the midst of meaningful reinvestment — modernising its technology and building new capability — at the same time as engaging Oasis Partners to explore a sale. That combination is not unusual. It is, increasingly, the norm for quality software businesses at this point in the cycle. The task for Oasis Partners was to ensure that reinvestment was understood by the market for what it was: an investment in durability, not a signal of weakness.

Persistence and a considered, patient approach to market were essential. Not every buyer was the right buyer, and not every conversation led anywhere — but each one helped refine how the opportunity was presented, and to whom.

Changing the Narrative

The turning point in this campaign was less about finding a new prospect and more about changing the lens through which the business was being assessed. Oasis Partners reframed the opportunity away from a standard trading-multiple sale of a software developer, and toward what CIBIS actually represented: a commercialised IP play, underpinned by sticky client relationships in durable sectors. Recurring, embedded technology relationships that are genuinely difficult to displace are a fundamentally different asset class to a business valued purely on a recent earnings run-rate.

That reframe changed who was prepared to engage — and how they valued what they were buying.

Finding the Right Home

Oasis Partners ultimately surfaced a discreet acquirer of Australian IT product businesses — one with the engineering, sales, and marketing infrastructure already in place to do what CIBIS, on its own, would have needed considerable further time and capital to achieve: fully unlock the potential of its product portfolio. That capability, more than price alone, was what made this the right outcome for CIBIS and its shareholders.

What This Deal Reflects About the Broader Market

The CIBIS transaction illustrates something we are seeing repeatedly across the software and technology sector: the businesses achieving the best outcomes are not always the ones with the cleanest recent numbers. They are the ones where the seller, and the advisor representing them, can clearly articulate what’s being built — and why a buyer should value the platform, not just the trailing twelve months.

A few things stand out. First, reinvestment cycles are lengthening as AI adoption accelerates, which means more good businesses will present with temporarily softer performance in the years ahead — this is a market dynamic to plan for, not a problem to hide. Second, the right buyer is increasingly defined by capability rather than capital alone; the acquirers achieving the best outcomes are the ones who can execute on a vision the seller could see but couldn’t yet fund or resource themselves. And third, patience and the willingness to properly reframe an opportunity — rather than accept the first read of the numbers — routinely make the difference between an underwhelming outcome and a genuinely strong one. In reality, matching the business feature and story to the right acquirer means you will have to kiss a lot of frogs (discreetly). For further information on why discretion matters click here.

For founders in this position, that’s an important reminder: a business’s most recent set of numbers is a snapshot, not the whole picture. The market is increasingly capable of seeing the difference — provided the story is told well, and to the right audience.

Congratulations to All Involved

Congratulations to the CIBIS team and to the acquiring business as they begin the next chapter.

If you’re a software or technology business owner navigating a period of reinvestment, and thinking about what that means for your exit, Oasis Partners has been unlocking value for shareholders of private companies since 1984 and has completed over 500 transactions. Speak to us to understand what a considered, strategic approach to your sale could look like.