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Seattle-area enterprise software giant Smartsheet is in acquisition talks with a group of private equity firms including Vista Equity Partners and Blackstone, according to a report Thursday from Reuters.

Shares of Smartsheet rose nearly 10% following the report, before declining slightly to end the day up more than 4% in advance of the release of its its second quarter earnings after the market closed.

Smartsheet CEO Mark Mader declined to comment Thursday afternoon during the company’s earnings conference call when analysts asked about the report of the acquisition talks.

Reuters reported in June that Smartsheet hired investment bankers after receiving buyout interest from private equity firms.

Smartsheet stock is up 20% over the past six months, and its market capitalization is around $7 billion.

In the earnings report Thursday afternoon, revenue increased 17% to $276.4 million for Smartsheet’s fiscal second quarter, ended July 31. The company’s operating loss was $8.5 million, vs. a loss of $36.1 million in the same period a year ago.

There was no mention of the company exploring M&A or other strategic alternatives in the earnings report.

Smartsheet makes cloud-based enterprise work management technologies for managing and tracking projects, collaborating, storing data, and automating and assigning tasks, among other capabilities. It serves 85% of the Fortune 500 as customers. The company competes with Asana, Monday.com, Microsoft, and others. 

Smartsheet, which launched in 2005 and went public in 2018, has more than 3,300 employees.

Smartsheet revenue rose 20% year-over-year to $263 million during its first fiscal quarter, topping analyst estimates. It also trimmed net losses from $29.9 million in the year-ago quarter to $8.9 million.

Vista Equity Partners, an Austin, Texas-based firm with more than $100 billion in assets, previously acquired other publicly traded Seattle-area tech companies including Apptio in 2019 Avalara in 2022. Vista currently holds a 4.7% stake in Smartsheet.

M&A activity has slowed in the past few years, creating “pent-up demand (and supply), particularly in the private equity universe,” according to a recent report from PwC.