Thoma Bravo to Take Barracuda Networks Private in $1.6 Billion Acquisition

**Editor’s Note: Please click here for a recap of the biggest channel-impacting merger and acquisition news from September and October.**

Cybersecurity firm Barracuda Networks has agreed to be acquired by private equity investment firm Thoma Bravo in an all-cash transaction valued at $1.6 billion.

When the deal closes, Barracuda will operate as a privately held company with a continued focus on email security and management, network and application security, and data-protection offerings that can be deployed in cloud and hybrid environments.

Barracuda shareholders of record will receive $27.55 in cash for each share they hold of the company’s common stock. This price exceeds Barracuda’s 52-week high and represents a premium of 22.5 percent to the company’s 10-day average stock price prior to Nov. 27 of $22.49.

The transaction is expected to close before Barracuda’s fiscal year ends Feb. 28, 2018.

“We believe the proposed transaction offers an opportunity for us to accelerate our growth with our industry-leading security platform that’s purpose-built for highly distributed, diverse cloud and hybrid environments,” said BJ Jenkins, Barracuda’s CEO “We will continue Barracuda‘s tradition of delivering easy-to-use, full-featured solutions that can be deployed in the way that makes sense for our customers. Thoma Bravo has an excellent history of investing in growing security businesses, and this transaction speaks to the value and strength of Barracuda’s security platform, which helps customers protect and manage their networks, applications and data. I expect that our employees, customers, and partners will benefit from this partnership.”

This summer, Thoma Bravo acquired remote monitoring and management vendor Continuum. The investment firm has been very active in recent years, acquiring or investing heavily in IT companies such as Dynatrace, McAfee, Qlik, Riverbed and SolarWinds.

“Barracuda is a proven industry leader, consistently bringing powerful, comprehensive solutions to customers in an increasingly prevalent, hostile, and complex threat environment,” said Seth Boro, a managing partner at Thoma Bravo. “We believe that Barracuda is at the forefront of innovation in several highly strategic areas of the cybersecurity market and are excited to be the company’s partner in the next phase of its growth.”

Earlier this month, Barracuda acquired cloud archiving company Sonian.