Big Data Company Talend Going Private In $2.4B Thoma Bravo Acquisition Deal

The private equity company is offering $66 per share to buy Talend, a leading developer of data integration and data integrity software.

Big data software developer Talend is being acquired by private equity firm Thoma Bravo in a deal valued at $2.4 billion.

Under the memorandum of understanding disclosed Wednesday, Thoma Bravo will pay $66 per share in cash for Talend stock, putting Talend’s total market value at approximately $2.4 billion.

The two companies said the offer represents a 29 percent premium to the $51.30 closing price of Talend’s shares on Tuesday, March 9. They also said it represents an 81 percent premium to the volume weighted average price of Talend’s shares over the last 12 months.

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Once the deal is complete Talend, which currently trades on the Nasdaq exchange, will become a privately held company. Talend’s share price quickly rose to nearly match the Thoma Bravo offer once the deal was announced, hovering around $65.60 Wednesday afternoon.

Talend is one of the industry’s most significant providers of data integration and data integrity tools. Such tools are used to move data between IT systems, such as operational applications and data warehouse systems, and to manage and prepare data for specific tasks such as business analytics.

Talend’s Data Fabric software competes with products from such vendors as Informatica, Fivetran and Matillion, as well as against software from major vendors like IBM and Oracle and cloud platform companies Amazon Web Services and Google.

The company was originally started in France in 2004 and later moved much of its operations to the U.S. where it maintains its global headquarters in Redwood City, Calif.

Gartner listed Talend as a leader in the market researcher’s 2020 data integration magic quadrant report.

“We are pleased to move forward with Thoma Bravo, as the transaction will deliver compelling and certain cash value to Talend shareholders and significant strategic, long-term benefits for our customers, employees, and other stakeholders,” said Steve Singh, chairman of Talend’s board of directors, in a statement.

“Our Board is focused on driving shareholder value and has periodically evaluated potential transaction alternatives in the context of our standalone plan over the past several years,” Singh said. “With the successful advancement of our transformation effort led by our CEO over the past year, the Talend board and management team conducted a targeted process with potential financial and strategic parties to determine the best path forward for the company. We believe the transaction with Thoma Bravo validates the Talend team’s success in building a data market leader.”

For all of 2020, Talend reported revenue of $287.5 million, up 16 percent from $247.9 million in 2019. The company reported a net loss of $79.6 million for the year compared to a $61.5 million net loss in 2019.

“The last twelve months have underscored the importance of digital transformation and the unique and vital role Talend plays in ensuring enterprises can trust the data fueling their business,” said Talend CEO Christal Bemont in a statement.

Bemont, previously an executive with SAP’s Concur business, was hired as Talend’s CEO in January 2020 as part of a broader overhaul of the company’s management.

“I am pleased with how the team has executed through the challenges of 2020 and successfully delivered on the strategic initiatives and targets we laid out a year ago,” Bemont said. “As we look forward, the transaction with Thoma Bravo – a firm with a successful track record of helping the companies it acquires achieve long-term, sustainable growth – will provide Talend with additional capital, resources, and expertise to execute against our mission and leverage a large market opportunity to help all organizations become data-driven.”

Talend’s board of directors has unanimously approved the acquisition memorandum, which includes a 30-day “go-shop” period during which Talend can solicit alternative acquisition proposals. Once that time period expires Thoma Bravo will commence a tender offer for all outstanding ordinary shares and American Depository Shares of Talend stock.

The companies expect to close the deal when at least 80 percent of outstanding shares have been tendered. They said the tender offer is expected to close in the third quarter of 2021 with the acquisition itself completed sometime in the fourth quarter.

“We are thrilled to partner with the management team at Talend to continue to build upon their leadership position in the cloud data integration market,” said Seth Boro, a Thoma Bravo managing partner, in a statement. “We are confident we can apply our experiences working with market-leading software companies to accelerate Talend’s growth and complete its transition to the cloud.”