Contact: Brenon Daly
For the second time in less than a year, a micro-cap security company in which hedge fund Empire Capital holds a big position is being taken off the board. On Monday, Entrust said it agreed to a $114m offer from buyout firm Thoma Bravo. Terms call for the acquirer to pay $1.85 for each of the 61.3 million Entrust shares outstanding. The roughly 22% premium essentially values Entrust where it was last October. (The deal also carries a ‘go-shop’ provision.)
Empire, which has a seat on Entrust’s board, holds about 11.8 million shares of the company, or 19% of the total. (That means the hedge fund’s payday for its stake will be just $22m.) Although the board has signed off on it, the terms of the buyout aren’t exactly staggeringly rich: Entrust has $24m in cash and no debt, lowering the company’s enterprise value to just $90m. Entrust did about $100m in sales in 2008 and was expected to record only a slight dip in revenue this year, according to Wall Street projections.
The valuation of less than 1x trailing revenue for Entrust is just half the level of Tumbleweed Communications, the previous security company that Empire was involved with. In a trade sale last June, Tumbleweed got picked up by French rival Sopra. The deal valued Tumbleweed at nearly 2x trailing sales. Of course, it was a different time back then. For its part, Entrust was trading at about $3 on the day Sopra announced the Tumbleweed acquisition.