Contact: Scott Denne
Citrix’s first acquisition of 2015 sets it up for another year of tactical M&A. Though up from 2013, we tracked just $65m in dealmaking by Citrix in 2014. Sanbolic, a 15-year-old company that brings software-defined storage into Citrix’s VDI stack, appears to be another tuck-in.
In 2012, Citrix announced $833m in acquisitions. That was its highest annual total on record, though it was hardly an outlier. Over the previous decade Citrix had been willing to invest in larger deals. Prior to that record-breaking year it had only dipped below $100m annually on three occasions – 2009, 2008 and 2004.
Citrix was growing revenue at a double-digit pace in 2012. Now that its core desktop business is maturing, growth has come down to mid-single digits in the most recent quarter, with license revenue declining at the same rate. Last year, management was open about the fact that M&A would likely be limited to tuck-ins, rather than strategic deals such as Zenprise and Bytemobile that got Citrix into ancillary markets. If Sanbolic is any indication, the company doesn’t plan to change that just yet.
Citrix M&A by year
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Source: The 451 M&A KnowledgeBase
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