Category: Private Equity

What to look for in tech M&A in 2018

Brenon Daly

Contact: Brenon Daly

As we look back on 2017 and ahead to 2018, 451 Research has published its annual forecast for tech M&A, highlighting the trends that we expect to shape deal flow and the markets that we think will see much of the activity. The 2018 Tech M&A Outlook – Introduction serves as an overview of the broad M&A market, setting the stage for the upcoming publication of our comprehensive report that features analysis and predictions for eight specific IT markets on what deals are likely in 2018.

The full report, which we think of as an ‘M&A playbook’ for the enterprise IT market, has insightful forecasts for activity in application software, information security, mobility and other key sectors. The 80-plus-page 2018 Tech M&A Outlook report will be published at the end of January. It will be available at no additional cost for subscribers to 451 Research’s M&A KnowledgeBase Professional and Premium products, and will be available for purchase for 451 Research clients and others that don’t subscribe to our M&A KnowledgeBase products. (If you’re interested in purchasing the full 80-plus-page report, contact your account manager or click here.)

In the meantime, our introduction provides insights on some of the overall dealmaking trends that are also likely to shape activity and valuations in sector-specific transactions. Key highlights in our overview of the broader M&A market include:

  • After tech M&A spending in both 2015 and 2016 topped a half-trillion dollars, what happened that knocked the value of deals in 2017 down to just $325bn?
  • Many of the tech industry’s biggest buyers printed only half as many deals as they have in recent years. Is that the new pace of M&A at these serial acquirers, or will they rev up again in 2018?
  • The pending tax overhaul will likely add billions of dollars to the treasuries at major tech vendors. Why don’t we think that will necessarily lead to more M&A? If they don’t spend it on deals, what are tech companies going to do with the windfall?
  • Which tech markets are expected to see the biggest flow of M&A dollars in the coming year? Enterprise security tops the forecast once again, but what about emerging cross-sector themes such as machine learning and the Internet of Things?
  • How did private equity (PE) move from operating on the fringes of the tech industry to become the buyer of record? PE firms accounted for an unprecedented one out of every four tech transactions last year. Why do we think their share of the market will only increase?
  • VC portfolios are stuffed, as the number of exits in 2017 slumped to its lowest level since the recession. What challenges loom for startups and the broader entrepreneurial community without the return of billions of dollars from those investments?
  • For startups, will venture capital be flowing freely in 2018? Or will the polarized VC market (fewer rounds, but bigger rounds) continue this year?
  • Despite nearly ideal stock market conditions, why don’t we expect much acceleration in the tech IPO market in 2018? What needs to happen – to both supply and demand – for the number of new offerings to take off?

For answers to these questions – as well as other factors that will influence dealmaking in 2018 – see our just-published 2018 Tech M&A Outlook – Introduction.

For PE, $20bn deals are so 2007

Brenon Daly

Contact: Brenon Daly

Looking to put its mountainous cash holdings to work, private equity (PE) has become a velocity play. Deal-hungry financial acquirers have scaled back the size of the checks they write, but have compensated for that by writing a lot more checks.

This year, for instance, buyout shops have put up twice as many $1bn+ tech transactions as they did during the pre-credit crisis peak, but only half as many big ones. As PE firms lower their sights, their current overall M&A spending is coming up well short of the amount they threw around in the previous generation.

To understand this shift in price preference, it’s useful to compare PE dealmaking at the top end of the market in 2017, which will see an overall record number of sponsor-backed transactions, with the previous high-water year for PE spending in 2007. This year, 451 Research’s M&A KnowledgeBase has recorded 24 acquisitions by PE firms valued at $1bn or more, with total spending on those deals of $69bn. In contrast, 2007 saw fewer than half that number of billion-dollar transactions (11 vs. 24), but spending on those big-ticket deals was one-quarter higher ($85bn vs. $69bn).

A decade ago, buyout shops were looking to bag elephants. The prices of the two largest transactions in 2007 were both a full $10bn higher than this year’s biggest PE print, according to the M&A KnowledgeBase. (And for the record, this year’s sole buyout blockbuster – the late-September PE-led $17.9bn purchase of Toshiba’s flash memory business – looks more like the consortium deals we saw last decade than the PE transactions we’ve seen recently.)

For the most part, however, those blockbuster deals from last decade, with their 11-digit price tags, haven’t delivered the hoped-for returns. PE firms are now hoping that by going small, they can get a bigger bang.

TITUS goes from bootstrapped to buyout with Blackstone

Brenon Daly

Contact: Brenon Daly

Private equity (PE) firm Blackstone Group has picked up a majority stake in TITUS, marking an unconventional bootstrapped-to-buyout exit for the 12-year-old data classification startup. Terms weren’t revealed. With the acquisition, PE shops have now purchased more cybersecurity vendors in 2017 than any year in history, according to 451 Research’s M&A KnowledgeBase (see graphic below).

The transaction comes two years after Microsoft made a similar data security move, reaching for Israel-based startup Secure Islands. (Although the price of that deal wasn’t disclosed, subscribers to the M&A KnowledgeBase can see our proprietary estimate on terms.) However, Secure Islands was a much smaller company than TITUS, both in terms of revenue and technology. Secure Islands focused primarily on extending security for Microsoft technology, specifically Office 365 and SharePoint, while TITUS has a broader technology platform. Also, according to our understanding, profitable TITUS generates more than four times the sales that Secure Islands did at the time it was acquired.

For Blackstone (in this case, through its Tactical Opportunities team), the purchase of TITUS represents a return to the information security (infosec) market, with a platform that lends itself to additional bolt-on acquisitions. (The firm used the buy-and-build strategy with infosec reseller/service provider Optiv before selling it to Kohlberg Kravis Roberts a year ago.) Once TITUS is in the portfolio, which should come before the end of the year, Blackstone could help cover the costs of buying into markets where TITUS currently partners. Specifically, markets such as data-loss prevention and archiving would be logical adjacent sectors for Blackstone-backed TITUS to look to shop in.

Cybersecurity turns into a busy bazaar

Brenon Daly

Contact: Brenon Daly

The holiday shopping season kicked off last week, and for one tech sector, it was a particularly bountiful time for picking up some companies. Information security (infosec) acquirers announced an unprecedented seven transactions during the week that started on Cyber Monday. The pace represented a dramatic acceleration from the year-to-date average of just two deals announced each week.

With last week’s flurry, the number of infosec acquisitions in 2017 has already eclipsed last year’s total, even as overall tech M&A volume this year is heading for a mid-teens percentage drop from last year, according to 451 Research’s M&A KnowledgeBase. (This year already ranks as the second-busiest year for infosec, with deal volume tracking to roughly 50% higher than the start of the decade.) Probably more important than the sheer number of transactions was who was doing the dealing:

-McAfee announced its first purchase since throwing off the shackles of full ownership of Intel last year. By all accounts, McAfee’s step back into the M&A realm with cloud security startup Skyhigh Networks came at a sky-high price.
-An infrequent acquirer, Trend Micro reached for a small application security startup based in Montreal, IMMUNIO. It is only the third acquisition the Japan-based company has done since 2011.
-Thoma Bravo continued this year’s record level of infosec M&A by private equity (PE) firms, taking Barracuda Networks private for $1.6bn. The M&A KnowledgeBase indicates that 2017 is on pace for more PE purchases in this market than any year in history, likely to come in about quadruple the number of sponsor-backed infosec deals in 2012.

Expanding the timeframe beyond just last week, we see a number of other trends this year that have contributed to strong infosec deal volume in 2017, which should continue in 2018. For starters, the industry’s largest stand-alone vendor has stepped back into the market in a big way. Symantec has inked five transactions so far in 2017, more than it has done, collectively, in the previous half-decade. Meanwhile, other infosec providers have either reemerged as buyers (Juniper acquiring Cyphort after a four-year infosec M&A hiatus) or started their own acquisition program (Qualys has announced two deals in the past four months, after printing just one transaction since the company’s founding in 1999).

November tech M&A slumps to pre-boom levels

Brenon Daly

Contact: Brenon Daly

Dealmaking in 2017 is going out with a whimper. Acquirers in November spent just $15.7bn on tech transactions across the globe, the lowest monthly total in three years, according to 451 Research’s M&A KnowledgeBase. The sluggish November activity comes after a similarly anemic October, with both months coming in only about half of the average monthly spending for the first nine months of 2017. Also, the number of deals announced in the just-completed month slumped to its lowest level of the year.

Even as November featured a decidedly lackluster level of overall M&A activity, a few transactions stood out, including:
-After entirely sitting out the wave of semiconductor consolidation in recent years, Marvell Technology Group shelled out $6bn in cash and stock for Cavium. The deal stands as the largest tech transaction in November, topping the collective spending on the next four biggest acquisitions last month.
-The information security industry saw its largest take-private, as buyout firm Thoma Bravo paid $1.6bn for Barracuda Networks in a late-November deal. A single-digit grower that throws off $10-20m in free cash flow each quarter, Barracuda has long been considered a candidate to go private as it works through a transition from on-premises products to cloud-based offerings.
-Richly valued startup Dropbox stepped back into the M&A market in November for the first time since July 2015, purchasing online publisher Verst. From 2012-15, the unicorn (or more accurately ‘decacorn’) had inked 23 acquisitions, according to the M&A KnowledgeBase.

The recent tail-off in acquisition spending has left the value of announced tech transactions so far this year at just $302bn, according to the M&A KnowledgeBase. With one month of 2017 remaining, this year is all but certain to come in with the lowest annual M&A spending since 2013. This year is tracking to a 34% decline in deal value compared with 2016 and an even-sharper 45% drop from 2015.

Bull market bypasses tech IPOs

Brenon Daly

Contact: Brenon Daly

Although there’s still a month remaining in 2017, most startups thinking about an IPO – even those already on file ‘confidentially’ – have already turned the calendar to 2018. The would-be debutants want to have results from the seasonally strong Q4 to boast about during their roadshow with investors, as well as toss around a bigger ‘this year’ sales figure to hang their valuation on. There’s no compelling reason to rush out an offering right now.

That’s true even though the tech IPO market has been pretty active recently. By our count, a half-dozen enterprise-focused tech vendors have come public in just the past two months. (To be clear, that tally includes only tech providers that sell to businesses, and leaves out recent consumer tech companies such as Stich Fix and CarGurus.) The total of six enterprise tech IPOs since October is already higher than the full Q4 2016 total of four offerings.

While there has been an uptick in IPO activity, shares of the newly public companies haven’t necessarily been ticking higher, at least not dramatically so. There hasn’t been a breakout offering. Based on the first trades of their freshly printed shares, not one of the recent debutants has returned more than 20%. Half of the companies are trading lower now than when they debuted. Meanwhile, investors who aren’t interested in these new issues can’t seem to get enough of stocks that have been around a while, bidding the broad market indexes to record high after record high this year. The much-desired IPO ‘pop’ has gone a little flat here at the end of 2017, which might have some startups slowing their march to Wall Street in early 2018.

 

Thoma Bravo goes fishing, lands a Barracuda

Brenon Daly

Contact: Brenon Daly

After four underwhelming years as a public company, Barracuda Networks will step off the NYSE in a $1.6bn take-private with Thoma Bravo. The all-cash transaction, which is expected to close within three months, is one of those rare deals that appears to fit both the buyer and the seller in equal measure. With $17bn sloshing around, private equity firm Thoma Bravo needs to put money to work and has made the information security market a favorite shopping ground, having previously taken four infosec vendors private.

For Barracuda, the proposed leveraged buyout (LBO) wraps a period of not truly finding a home on Wall Street. As a public company, Barracuda posted just one-third the return of the Nasdaq Composite over the same period. The $27.55 per share that Thoma Bravo is paying represents the highest price for Barracuda stock in two and a half years. At one point in 2015, shares of Barracuda changed hands above $40.

Part of the reason why Barracuda fell out of favor with investors is the company’s ongoing transition from an on-premises business to more of a cloud focus. The so-called ‘legacy’ revenue – much of which is tied to appliances – has been shrinking every quarter, but still represents roughly one-third of sales. Deemphasizing that business has boosted Barracuda’s operating margins, but has slowed overall revenue growth to the single digits. Going private to complete the transition to a higher-margin software business, while continuing to throw off $10-20m of free cash flow each quarter, makes sense for Barracuda.

On the other side, Thoma Bravo pays essentially a market multiple for a company that has figured out a way to turn a profit selling into the underserved SMB market. (The enterprise value of Thoma Bravo’s bid stands at $1.48bn, or 4x trailing 12-month sales at Barracuda. That roughly matches the 4.4x TTM sales/EV multiple that Thoma Bravo paid in its most recent infosec LBO, Imprivata.) Further, Thoma Bravo has some growth opportunities once it adds Barracuda to its portfolio, both in terms of products (for instance, the target’s managed security service) and markets (Barracuda still generates 70% of its revenue in the US).

For more real-time information on tech M&A, follow us on Twitter @451TechMnA.

Tech M&A stumbles out of summer

Brenon Daly

Contact: Brenon Daly

This summer’s momentum in the tech M&A market petered out as autumn arrived. Spending in the just-completed month of October slumped to its second-lowest monthly total of the year. Across the globe, acquirers announced just $17bn worth of tech and telco purchases in October, equaling only slightly more than half the average monthly deal value in the nine previous months, according to 451 Research’s M&A KnowledgeBase.

October’s spending represents a sharp decline from September and, more broadly, the entire third quarter. (See our full Q3 report.) Spending on tech deals in September, which featured this year’s two largest acquisitions, came in more than three times higher than October. The September surge helped boost overall Q3 deal value to a quarterly level more in-line with the boom years of 2015 and 2016. (The two previous years stand out as banner years for tech M&A. At this point in the year, deal makers had spent 85% more in 2015 and 50% more in 2016 than they have so far in 2017.)

However, deal makers abruptly hit the brakes in October, particularly when shopping for big-ticket targets. Our M&A KnowledgeBase records just three transactions last month valued at $1bn or more, down from a monthly average of five 10-digit deals so far in 2017. Without a continuation of those billion-dollar deals, the start of Q4 is tracking much more closely to the first two quarters of this year, rather than the breakout Q3. Overall, with 10 months now in the books, 2017 is on pace for about $340bn in full-year M&A spending, which would represent the lowest annual total in four years.

Elliott prints first take-private 

Scott Denne

Contact: Scott Denne

Often a bidder, never a buyer, Elliott Management looks set to make its first take-private of a tech company, reaching an agreement to buy network-monitoring vendor Gigamon for $1.6bn. The infamous activist investor has often agitated for sales of publicly traded tech companies and launched offers of its own, but has yet to bring one over the finish line.

Elliot’s list of unsuccessful – and typically unsolicited – bids for public tech companies goes at least as far back as its 2008 offers for Epicor and Packeteer (although it had once invested alongside Francisco Partners in a 2006 take-private). More recently, it was rebuffed by LifeLock, which negotiated with Elliott before reaching a deal to sell to Symantec. It’s worth noting, however, that Elliott was only unsuccessful in its role as buyer. As an investor, it has often made money on unsuccessful bids. For example, in the case of LifeLock, Symantec’s acquisition ultimately drove the value of Elliott’s LifeLock shares roughly 80% higher than the price it paid six months earlier.

For Gigamon, a sale to Elliott seems preferable to staying public. A downward revision of its guidance at the end of last year opened the door for Elliott to accumulate a 7% stake in the business. And today it’s announcing a sale to Elliott, rather than hopping on an investor call to explain a third-quarter miss on its revenue guidance. Despite that trajectory, Gigamon is fetching a healthy valuation, trading for 5.3x trailing revenue, two turns above the valuation that rival Ixia fetched in its sale to Keysight earlier this year.

Unlike earlier attempts, Elliott pursued Gigamon through its dedicated private equity (PE) vehicle, Evergreen Coast Capital. The combination of activism and private equity in a single investment group adds yet another strategy to a PE landscape that’s grown increasingly diverse as limited partners continue to cram cash into PE funds, leading to a record number of tech buyouts. In the official start to its PE strategy, Elliott joins an expanding list of PE investors willing to pay more than $1bn on tech transactions. So far this year, almost one in five $1bn-plus PE deals have been printed by a firm that’s never done a transaction of that size, compared with just one in 10 last year, according to 451 Research’s M&A KnowledgeBase.

*Click here for estimate
Source: 451 Research’s M&A KnowledgeBase

For more real-time information on tech M&A, follow us on Twitter @451TechMnA.

The Logi-cal move for Marlin Equity Partners’ newest asset 

Scott Denne

Contact: Krishna Roy, Scott Denne

Marlin Equity Partners extends its shopping spree in business intelligence (BI) software with the acquisition of Logi Analytics. Following its 2014 reach for Longview Solutions, a corporate performance management (CPM) stalwart, Marlin has bought two assets to bolt on to that platform – arcplan and Tidemark Systems. Although it hasn’t announced plans to combine Logi with Longview, we suspect that could be the case since Logi offers capabilities that align with Longview’s strategy to develop into a modern CPM platform.

Logi would provide Longview with vital elements to address this endgame – embeddable BI and analytics, dashboards, and reports. Logi has built itself into a go-to name for embedded analysis. Furthermore, the company has expanded its purview into visual analysis and data discovery, and moved into self-service data preparation in recent years. Longview could make use of these offerings to assemble a soup-to-nuts CPM platform.

Although terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, it’s likely a significant transaction. Logi had raised almost $50m in venture capital, and as of 2016 was generating about the same amount in annual revenue. With this deal, Marlin extends its BI portfolio beyond CPM, a roughly $1bn market, into reporting and analytics, a market that, according to 451 Research’s Total Data Market Monitor, is 20x larger and contested by 10x as many vendors.