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US personal fairness agency Thoma Bravo has agreed to take UK cyber safety firm Darktrace personal in a transaction valuing the corporate at £4.3bn, marking the most recent high-profile takeover of a London-listed group.
The supply, which values the shares at 620p every, represents a 20 per cent premium to Thursday’s closing share worth and despatched Darktrace’s shares up 19 per cent in early buying and selling in London on Friday. Darktrace floated in April 2021 at 250p per share.
Darktrace’s board mentioned it had beforehand reviewed and rejected unsolicited presents from Thoma Bravo on the idea that they didn’t pretty symbolize the worth of its enterprise. The settlement comes after the 2 events held discussions about taking the corporate personal in the summertime of 2022, when Darktrace’s market capitalisation was £2.7bn.
If the deal goes via, it will mark the most recent high-profile take-private of a UK-listed firm by an abroad personal fairness group. Final 12 months, various UK corporations, together with veterinary prescribed drugs firm Dechra and the restaurant group behind Japanese eating chain Wagamama, had been acquired by buyout companies.
The choice to go personal will finish a turbulent interval on the London inventory marketplace for Darktrace.
Based in 2013, the Cambridge-based group supplies synthetic intelligence-based cyber safety companies designed to guard corporations in opposition to the specter of cloud assaults, which corporations are more and more confronting as a result of proliferation of cyber warfare.
It took benefit of a surge in demand from traders for fast-growing know-how corporations when it listed three years in the past, with its share worth tripling within the six months after it went public.
Nonetheless, the share worth slumped later in 2021 after stockbroker Peel Hunt mentioned it thought the corporate was solely price half of its market worth.
In January 2023, New York-based Quintessential Capital Administration revealed a report alleging Darktrace appeared to have simulated or anticipated gross sales to “phantom” prospects via a “community of keen resellers”. The report additionally alleged the corporate appeared to have incorrectly booked gross sales of {hardware} as software program and may need misrepresented the character of its income.
Darktrace rebutted claims within the brief vendor’s assault.
The FTSE 250 group has additionally struggled to disentangle itself from ties with Mike Lynch and Autonomy, the UK software program group he based, because the British tech entrepreneur faces a fraud trial within the US. He has pleaded not responsible.
Darktrace mentioned the trial was “not a Darktrace matter” and “pertains to occasions which befell at Autonomy nicely earlier than Darktrace was even based”.
Darktrace’s chief government Poppy Gustafsson beforehand labored as Autonomy’s company controller and helped arrange the cyber safety firm utilizing funds partly from Lynch’s Invoke Capital.
Thoma Bravo is shopping for the enterprise to assist it broaden into the US, the place it owns dozens of enterprise software program companies, an individual conversant in the matter mentioned.
“The acquisition will present Darktrace entry to a robust monetary associate in Thoma Bravo with deep sector and US markets experience who can help Darktrace’s development,” the Darktrace board mentioned in a press release.
Based greater than 40 years in the past, Thoma Bravo has practically $140bn in belongings underneath administration and is famend as one of many world’s main software program funding teams.
The funding agency has been increasing its presence in Europe and introduced in 2022 that it was opening an workplace in London. Thoma Bravo mentioned earlier this 12 months that it had accomplished a deal to purchase German compliance software program firm EQS Group.