Tableau Software Inc. explored a potential sale in recent months, according to people familiar with the matter, as technology companies scramble for partners amid a wave of mergers in the industry.

The Seattle company was working on a potential sale as recently as this summer before the effort stalled, the people said.

Tableau's exploration of a sale came to light in a confidential draft presentation that was part of many of former Secretary of State Colin Powell's emails published in September by a website of self-described "hacktivists." Mr. Powell is on Salesforce's board of directors.

The Wall Street Journal reported on the document in a front-page article Wednesday that pushed up shares of Tableau as much as 7%, giving it a market value of nearly $4 billion.

A spokeswoman for Tableau, which makes data-visualization software, declined to comment. A spokeswoman for Salesforce, which sells web-based software for sales, marketing and customer service, on Tuesday described the presentation as a "landscape" of publicly owned companies and stressed that the appearance of company names on the list doesn't mean Salesforce ever intended to buy them. "Salesforce has a disciplined and thoughtful M&A process where we routinely survey the industry landscape across a wide range of companies, but acquire very few," she said.

Tableau is one of 14 potential targets named in the document, entitled "M&A Target Review." The words "In Play" appear in the Tableau column, suggesting the company was for sale as of May 17th, the date of the presentation. It has a code name—"Tuscany"—and is one of only three companies to which a section of the 60-page presentation is devoted. The other companies marked "In Play," Demandware Inc. and Qlik Technologies Inc., have since been sold—to Salesforce in the case of Demandware.

Technology is the most active sector for deal-making this year. There have been more than $468 billion in announced mergers, according to Dealogic.

Others on the target list include ServiceNow Inc., another software company whose shares also surged Wednesday.

Tableau was founded in 2003 and went public 10 years later. The company's stock tumbled earlier this year on a sluggish sales outlook and in August, it hired a former Amazon.com Inc. executive as its new chief executive, replacing the co-founder. Tableau's shares are down nearly 50% this year.

Salesforce has been on an acquisition spree, but the company lost out on a number of targets it coveted. Over the summer, it competed with Microsoft Corp. to buy social-networking site LinkedIn Corp. Microsoft ultimately prevailed, inking a $26 billion deal with LinkedIn. More recently, Salesforce held talks to buy Twitter Inc. but walked away after Salesforce shareholders expressed deep concerns over the potential combination and its shares swooned.

Rachael King contributed to this article.

Write to Dana Cimilluca at dana.cimilluca@wsj.com and Dana Mattioli at dana.mattioli@wsj.com

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 19, 2016 16:05 ET (20:05 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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