Thoma Bravo To Buy Cybersecurity Vendor Imperva For $2.1B

Private equity behemoth Thoma Bravo plans to acquire Imperva for $2.1 billion, just seven years after the application and data protection vendor filed for an IPO.

The Redwood Shores, Calif.-based cybersecurity vendor said Thoma Bravo will purchase the company for $55.75 per share, or 29.5 percent higher than Imperva's price of $43.06 per share at the close of trading Tuesday. Imperva's stock rose nearly 28 percent to $55.10 in trading as of Wednesday at noon.

"Thoma Bravo has an excellent track record of supporting and adding value to leading cybersecurity companies, and we are delighted to bring on a partner with their caliber of strategic expertise," Imperva CEO Chris Hylen said in a statement. "The company will have greater flexibility to focus on executing our long-term strategy."

[Related: Centrify Names New CEO, To Spin Out Identity-as-a-Service Business]

Imperva will continue to be led by its current executive team, and will have a 45-day 'go shop' period, during which time the company may actively solicit alternative acquisition proposals and enter into a superior deal should one arise. If not, the acquisition by Chicago-based Thoma Bravo is subject to close late in the fourth quarter of 2018 or early in the first quarter of 2019.

"As a leading company that protects data and applications, regardless of whether they live in the cloud, on-premise or in a hybrid environment, Imperva is ahead of the curve from the rest of the cybersecurity industry, and we're thrilled with this exciting partnership," Seth Boro, a managing partner at Thoma Bravo, said in a statement.

Thoma Bravo's expertise and track record around investing in cybersecurity fit squarely within Imperva's long-term roadmap, Thoma Bravo partner Chip Virnig said in a statement. The private equity firm believes Imperva will continue to play a huge role as software applications and data at the epicenter of the economy come increasingly under attack, according to Virnig.

The acquisition comes less than three months after Imperva purchased Prevoty for $140 million to expand customers' visibility into how applications are accessed, what happens within the applications, and how applications and users interact with data.

Imperva went public on the New York Stock Exchange at $26.40 per share in November 2011, and traded at an all-time high of $76.88 per share four years later. The company was founded in 2002 as a web application firewall vendor, changed its name to Imperva in 2004, and named former Citrix GetGo leader Chris Hylen as its CEO in August 2017.

Thoma Bravo has been extremely active in the cybersecurity space this year, kicking things off with the purchase of publicly-traded storage and security player Barracuda Networks for $1.6 billion in February. Three months later, the private equity firm purchased a majority stake in LogRhythm to accelerate the Boulder, Colo.-based SIEM vendor's operational and product development roadmap.

In July, Thoma Bravo agreed to buy from investors a majority stake in Centrify to help the Santa Clara, Calif.-based identity management vendor expand its product capabilities both organically and through acquisitions. And earlier this week, Centrify announced plans to spin out its Identity-as-a-Service business into a stand-alone company called Idaptive, which will also be owned by Thoma Bravo.