BMO, a leading provider of asset-based finance solutions, closed as Sole Lender on a senior secured credit facility in support of MiddleGround Capital’s acquisition of HLC, Inc.  The ABL facility refinanced the Companies’ existing credit facilities, partially financed the acquisition, and will provide working capital financing to the company.  With operations in both Canada and the United States, BMO’s cross-border Asset Based Lending team provided a seamless “One Bank” financing solution to the company.

It’s only a matter of time before SaaS lending enters mainstream ABL.  Lending to SaaS, which stands for Software as a Service, differs from traditional software in that it is deployed and made accessible to users over the internet (or in the “Cloud”), and is going to be the next ABL battleground.  Today it remains a niche lending vertical conducted mostly by tech-focused banks and nonbank credit funds.  However, this is going to change meaningfully as the SaaS industry continues to mature. There are an estimated 10,000 private SaaS companies, the vast majority of which are early stage, generating less than $3 million in annual revenue.  To put this in perspective, companies such as the wildly popular Zoom and workforce tool Slack utilize SaaS models.  The U.S. economy is well into a transformational period where many business tools are moving to the cloud.