Bain Capital and Hellman & Friedman have cooled in their pursuit of DocuSign Inc (DOCU.O) over disagreements on how much they should pay to acquire the provider of online signature services, three people familiar with the matter said on Monday.
The private equity firms, which were competing to buy DocuSign, have not been able to agree a deal price with the company, which has a market value of $11 billion, after weeks of talks, the sources said.
It remains, possible, however, that the deal talks will resume in the future, the sources added, requesting anonymity because the matter is confidential.
Bain and DocuSign did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Hellman & Friedman declined to comment.
DocuSign shares dropped more than 7% in New York on Monday on the news.
A deal for DocuSign would have been one of the biggest leveraged buyouts of the last two years as a spike in financing costs has made larger deals harder to clinch.
Over the past year, only a handful of such deals have been inked. In November, Blackstone and Permira unveiled a deal to buy European online classifieds company Adevinta ASA for about 14 billion euros ($15 billion).
In July, buyout firm GTCR agreed to buy a majority stake in Worldpay, the merchant services business of Fidelity National Information Services (FIS.N), in a deal that valued the unit at $18.5 billion.
DocuSign went public in 2018 with a $6 billion valuation. It allows customers to sign documents online from any electronic device and counts large corporations such as T-Mobile, United Airlines and Thermo Fisher among its clients.
The company reported quarterly adjusted earnings of 79 cents per share for the quarter that ended in October, up from 57 cents a year earlier. Revenue rose 8.5% to $700.4 million.
