The CTRM Blog

Patrick and I had a briefing late last week from Michael Schwartz, CMO at Triple Point on the acquisition of Softmar.

Higher commodity prices and volatility have also impacted freight rates meaning that acquiring a platform that caters for freight rates as well as shipping operationally is a good fit within Triple Point’s focus on holistic risk management including market, credit, regulatory and operational risks. Michael stated that Triple Point is seeing a lot more clients focus on the end-to-end P/L of a deal, including looking at the value chain, before going ahead with it and that the Softmar product brings the vessel operations, shipping movements and freight rate trading into that equation.

News today that Triple Point has made another acquisition, this time it has acquired Softmar. Softmar is one of the few solutions on the market that covers freight and shipping. The company’s software is used by ship owners, operators, and charterers (including those that trade, procure, market, and move commodities) to manage all aspects of the vessel chartering process, post-fixture activities, the financial aspects of commercial vessel operations, and the trading and hedging of freight rate risk.

From CommodityPoint’s standpoint, this looks like another great acquisition by Triple Point as the shipping and freight area has really seen a lot of interest from solution procurers this last 24-months and Softmar was definitely one of, if not, THE leader in this area.

Triple Point win the award for the first new deal announcement to cross my desk in 2010 with their win at Suncor Energy. Suncor have licensed Triple Point’s Enterprise Solution which includes Commodity XL(TM) for Oil, Gas, Credit Scoring, Credit Analytics, and Xchange. Additionally, Suncor has licensed PhysOps ‘Visual Cockpit’(TM) and Gas Scheduling ‘Visual Cockpit’(TM). You can find more details in the full announcement located in the CTRM Software News section of the blog.

Triple Point Technology announced yesterday that they have licensed their Commodity XL(TM) for Hedge Accounting, Fair Value Disclosure and FAS 161 to Chiquita Brands International Inc. As noted in the press release, “Chiquita is a leading international marketer and distributor of high-quality fresh and value-added food products including bananas, fruits and green salads. With annual revenues of nearly $4 billion, Chiquita has operations in more than 80 countries worldwide”.

Triple Point have announced two more additions to their portfolio of clients; TVA and Unilever. According to the announcements, TVA selected Commodity XL™ to provide an integrated platform and advanced analytics to manage fuel and power price volatility for its energy business while Unilever selected Triple Point’s SAP-endorsed Commodity SL™ to optimize commodity management across agricultural raw materials and business units.