NetQoS back in the market

Contact: Brenon Daly

When we caught up with NetQoS last June, the company had just inked its first purchase after a two-and-a-half-year hiatus, taking home trade-monitoring software startup Helium Systems. The Austin, Texas-based network performance management vendor is now ready to continue that shopping. Speaking at the Pacific Crest Securities Data Center Conference on Wednesday, Gordon Daugherty, the company’s head of corporate development, said NetQos is looking at a broad range of deals in a broad range of sizes.

Daugherty indicated that the company is eyeing companies in markets such as security and systems management, among others. Loosely, NetQoS is targeting a deal that could add about $10m in revenue to the $65m that it plans to record this year. However, Daugherty said the company is open to doing something larger than that placeholder. A larger purchase would require NetQoS to raise money for the first time in more than a half-decade. (The company has been profitable since 2005.) Daugherty added that the majority owner of NetQoS, New York City-based private equity firm Liberty Partners, has signed off on a fresh round to fund the right deal.

NetQoS acquisitions

Date Target Rationale
June 2008 Helium Systems Trade monitoring
December 2005 Pine Mountain Group Services
April 2005 RedPoint Network Systems Device management

Source: The 451 M&A KnowledgeBase