Blucora plans to move its headquarters to Texas next year and close its Bellevue, Wash. office.
The move is part of Blucora’s transition to becoming a financial services company. It is moving the corporate office to Irving, Texas, home of HD Vest, which Blucora acquired last October for $580 million. A spokeswoman for Blucora said the majority of the 35 employees in the Bellevue office, most of whom work in corporate roles such as legal, finance and human resources, will be laid off when the move happens next June.
In a statement, John Clendening, president and CEO of Blucora, explained the reasoning behind the move to Texas.
As we have been discussing publicly for several months, we are transitioning our business to a new ‘One Blucora’ model from our prior holding company model. The best way to support this transformation is to co-locate the corporate team with one of the operating units. With the sale of InfoSpace earlier this year, Blucora no longer has an operating unit in Bellevue. So we have made the decision to move Blucora’s offices from Bellevue, WA to Irving, Texas by June 2017, in a carefully staged transition. By bringing our teams together, we will create stronger connections and collaboration across business units.
Among the departing employees is Chief Financial Officer Eric Emans, who will stay on to help with the transition to a new headquarters and a new CFO before leaving.
Blucora — formerly known as InfoSpace — acquired tax preparation software maker TaxACT for $288 million in 2012 and followed that up with last year’s HD Vest purchase. As part of the HD Vest acquisition, Blucora decided to sell both its internet search business InfoSpace and its e-commerce business Monoprice.
Blucora announced yesterday that it has agreed to sell its e-commerce business Monoprice for $40 million to power cord and networking equipment maker YFC-BonEagle Electronic Co. That came a few months after Blucora sold InfoSpace. for $45 million to email marketing company OpenMail.
“This announcement marks the final step in our transformation to a financial solutions firm,” Clendening said. “We have done exactly as we said we would: earlier in the year we sold our legacy InfoSpace business and we will soon divest Monoprice. We have driven strong cash-flow performance and made terrific strides in de-levering the business.”
