Xero chill
Xero’s $4 billion Melio deal is its boldest US play yet — and a high-stakes test of CEO Sukhinder Singh Cassidy’s strategy, salary and investor faith.
Xero chief executive Sukhinder Singh Cassidy boasts one of the biggest pay packets on the ASX for a deceptively simple — yet far from straightforward — goal: cracking the enormously lucrative US market.
Today, we found out how she plans to do that.
The ASX-listed company will pay almost $4 billion to acquire payments company Melio in a bid to finally gain a proper foothold in North America and make a dent in a market still dominated by accounting software titan Intuit.
“What does great US scale look like? It looks like more customers that are worth more and do more with Xero,” Singh Cassidy told analysts on a conference call on Wednesday. "I know that’s very simplistic, but it’s actually the guiding principle that has led our investor strategy."
Melio first came into Xero’s orbit two years ago when it joined the company’s app store. Xero made its unsolicited approach in late 2024, just after Melio finalised its own raise — a significant down round, given it had been valued at USD4 billion ($6.2 billion) during the frothy tech days of 2021.
