Lost your keys? They’ll find it. Lost your wallet? They’ll find it. Lost your kid? They’ll probably find it too. Tile is a company that prides itself on finding things. So good are they at finding things, tech company Life360 (ASX: 360) has acquired them for $282 million. 

Founded in 2012, Tile specialises in producing small tiles that can be attached or embedding into products and located via a smartphone, tablet or laptop. To date, Tile has sold more than 45 million tiles across 195 countries where it’s cloud-based finding platform enables users to find any product that is attached to a tile. 

The acquisition is expected to strengthen Life360’s position in the market where they sell similar products but classify themselves as a family safety platform where GPS tracking can be used to keep tabs on loved ones, as well as things. 

“This is genuinely the most impactful deal in our company’s history, and along with our Jiobit acquisition from earlier this year, our vision of linking people, pets and things all in one place is now complete,” said Life360 Co-Founder and CEO, Chris Hulls. 

While it may be the largest deal in Life360’s history, it has not come out of the blue with Hulls and Tile CEO CJ Prober well known to each other. 

“We almost joined the companies together many times in our history, and I have been close with Tile’s current CEO, CJ Prober, since he took the reins in 2018. So this is not an opportunistic deal that came about from our strategic review, but rather the acquisition I’ve been hoping to make for the better part of a decade”.

Tile produces a range of tracking tiles which can vary in size and specification while possessing bluetooth functionality. As well as selling tiles direct to consumers, Tile also has more than 50 wholesale partners that build tiles into their own products with some better known ones including HP laptops, Fitbit wearables and Skullcandy headphones. 

Tile is expected to report revenue of approximately USD $103 million for CY21 from hardware and subscription sales. On top of that, they will have a further USD $15 million from subscription revenue generated from their 440,000 paid subscribers. 

“This is a landmark day for Tile. This acquisition not only brings together two incredible teams and complementary missions and values, it paves the way for us to jointly build the world’s leading solutions for peace of mind and safety,” said Tile CEO, CJ Prober, who will join the Life360 Board. 

Total consideration for the acquisition will be USD $205 million (AUD $282.8m) comprising $132.4m in cash, $37.6m in Life360 shares and $35m in retention awards. 

To fund the acquisition, Life360 has announced an AUD $280 million capital raise which will be undertaken as an institutional Placement ($160.2m) and Entitlement Offer to current shareholders ($119.8m), 

The Offer Price for both components of the capital raise is $12.00 which represents a 9.9% discount to the theoretical ex-rights price of A$13.31 on 22 November 2021.

This is the next step in our journey, and I could not be more excited to continue leading our incredible team and to join the Life360 Board”. 

Life360 expects that with the addition of Tile, the combined entity will create an opportunity to quickly secure greater market share and capitalise on tech developments in other peer-to-peer mesh networks. Especially amongst users that are not using iOS products. 

Tile will also have immediate access to the Life360 user base as a new plug-in-ready distribution channel and extension to its current finding network. Life360’s global user base of over 33 million smartphone users will boost Tile’s finding network by approximately 10x and provide near universal coverage. 

Life360 has reiterated its forecast of CY21 revenue to be in the range of USD $109-113 million with an underlying EBITDA loss expected around $14-18 million.