NIC Inc. built a private franchise on a simple bet: that states would rather rent their digital front door than build one. For three decades the model compounded quietly. The company funded the up-front cost of state-wide portals, then kept a negotiated slice of every transaction that flowed through them. That structure created a rare combination in the small-cap corner. Revenue tracks population and digital adoption, margins run at enterprise-software levels, and the balance sheet accumulated a war chest that required no new equity for years.
The ticker is a ghost today. Tyler Technologies closed its all-cash acquisition in 2021, paying 34.00 per share for every outstanding unit of equity. The company delisted, deregistered its securities, and filed its final annual report for the year ended December 31, 2020. Any surviving EGOV listing on a data feed is a stale artifact. The equity research question is now historical. It asks whether a mid-thirties earnings multiple was the right price for a business whose growth engine is a portfolio of renewals, not a product roadmap.