TickerCRNC
SectorSoftware - Application
Mkt cap$446M
EV / EBITDA14.2×
PostureHigh Velocity
Composite70/100
LensBuyer-side

SE-Cluster Research·Issuer Brief·Q2 2026CIK 1768267

Cerence Inc.

CRNCHIGH VELOCITYFILING INTENSITY

Cerence Inc. reads as an High Velocity (composite 70/100); Selective Buyer deploying $0 across 0 disclosed transactions, running flat vs the prior cycle · primary market Software & IT.

Lens

Disclosed M&A capital (2023–2025)

N/A

flat

vs N/A in 2020–2022

Disclosed transactions

N/A

flat

0/3 active fiscal years in window

Buyer archetype

Selective Buyer

Acquisition use is visible but targeted.

Composite score

/100

High Velocity dominates · Filing Intensity

Financial snapshotRevenue$302M
EBITDA$37M
Enterprise value$525M
EV / Revenue1.7×
EV / EBITDA14.2×
P/EN/A
CashN/A
Total debt$173M
as of 2026-05-10

§ I·SE-Cluster Issuer Brief

Behavioral posture, nine reads.

Each index scores the issuer 0–100 against an EDGAR-anchored definition. Scores ≥ threshold elevate the issuer into the index's constituent set; the dominant index drives the masthead label.

Active Acquirer

7/100

Companies actively deploying disclosed capital into M&A

$700K disclosed buyer spend

Buyer Cadence

31/100

Buyer-side companies with recent filing activity

Filed within 33d
70 8-Ks

Target Probability

4/100

Issuers showing target-side patterns from filings

Spin/Carve

0/100

Issuers showing spin-off, carve-out, or sum-of-parts posture

Pressure Watch

14/100

Issuers facing activism, governance, or control pressure

Distress Watch

0/100

Issuers showing financial-distress filing patterns

Restatement Risk

0/100

Issuers with accounting-integrity flags from filings

Capital Velocity

Dominant

70/100

Issuers with the highest filing-activity intensity

70 8-Ks
4 form types

Quiet Power

34/100

Large issuers with low signal volume and clean disclosure cadence

Enterprise value $525M
10-Q 33d ago
2 active signals

§ II·SE-Cluster Issuer Brief

Capital cadence.

No disclosed M&A capital in the 10-year window.

This issuer has not disclosed material acquisition spend or count in the last ten fiscal years.

§ III·SE-Cluster Issuer Brief

Strategy posture.

The buyer's playbook in terms of strategic archetype: what each disclosed move says about how they're deploying capital.

Archetype mix

Platform
33%
Technology Acquisition
33%
Geographic Expansion
33%

Strategy keywords

Terms recurring across recent 10-K acquisition disclosures.

geographic_expansion
technology_acquisition
horizontal_consolidation
platform

§ IV·SE-Cluster Issuer Brief

Filing language.

Direct excerpts from acquisition disclosures and strategy sections: the verbs the buyer chose, in the filings they signed.

“We expect this acquisition to expand our current automotive solutions with a range of new predictive intelligence, embedded natural language, and hybrid virtual assistant capabilities”

10-KFY2019

“expand our current automotive solutions with a range of new predictive intelligence, embedded natural language, and hybrid virtual assistant capabilities”

10-KFY2020

“we have acquired, and may acquire in the future, certain businesses and technologies primarily to expand our products and service offerings”

10-KFY2019

“acquired, and may acquire in the future, certain businesses and technologies primarily to expand our products and service offerings”

10-KFY2020

§ V·SE-Cluster Issuer Brief

Market context.

Where this issuer sits inside its SE-Cluster rollup wedge, with disclosed-spend rank plus trading comparables against the public peer set.

Primary market

Software & IT

Market spend (2023–2025): $217.7B
Market spend (2020–2022): $197.1B
Recent vs prior: +10%
Issuer rank in market: N/A
Share of market capital: 0.0%

Valuation positioning

14.2×EV / EBITDA

CRNC trades at a -0.2-turn discount to the Software & IT peer median of 14.3×.

EV / Revenue: 1.7×
Net debt / EBITDA: 4.7×
Peer median EV / EBITDA: 14.3×

Trading comparables

FMP market data · 2026-05-10

Company	EV / EBITDA	EV / Rev	Net debt / EBITDA	Revenue	M&A 2023–2025
Oracle CorporationORCL	23.4×	10.7×	0.2×	$64.1B	$27.7B
Microsoft CorporationMSFT	15.5×	9.8×	0.0×	$318.3B	$75.4B
Salesforce, Inc.CRM	14.3×	4.4×	0.6×	$41.5B	$12.1B
Cerence Inc.CRNC	14.2×	1.7×	4.7×	$302M	N/A
Ss&c Technologies Holdings, Inc.SSNC	11.0×	3.7×	-0.1×	$6.4B	$1.7B
Fiserv, Inc.FISV	7.6×	2.8×	0.1×	$21.1B	$10M

Trading multiples from FMP market data; disclosed M&A spend from the SE-Cluster EDGAR 10-K corpus. Peer set = top disclosed buyers in Software & IT. Bars scaled to the highest EV/EBITDA in the set.

§ VI·SE-Cluster Issuer Brief

Target landscape.

Public-issuer targets that fit this buyer's archetype and target categories from filing-derived signal. Scores reflect cross-signal fit; reasons cite the EDGAR-anchored facts that drove the match.

No qualifying public-issuer targets surfaced from the current signal mix.

Stated target categories

No target categories enumerated in the audited corpus for this issuer.

§ VII·SE-Cluster Issuer Brief

Filing activity & signal stream.

Filing cadence and event-driven signals visible on EDGAR. The signal stream below is curated from restatement / spin-carve / activism categories, providing context for any near-term call.

Filing cadence

10-K (annual)72025-11-20
10-Q (quarterly)202026-05-07
8-K (event)702026-05-07
Proxy / DEF 14A142026-02-03
Activism (13D / DFAN / PREC)0N/A

Signals on file

info
Signal
Serial acquisition history
info
Signal
10-K strategy themes

§ VIII·SE-Cluster Issuer Brief

Audited corpus.

No audited record on file for this CIK in the current v6 corpus.

This issuer has not been extracted into the v6 audited acquirer corpus yet. The brief above pulls from ranking-level aggregates and issuer-index signal only.

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