Global investment firm KKR has announced the signing of a definitive agreement to acquire Barracuda Networks, a leading provider of cloud-first security solutions, from Thoma Bravo, a software investment firm. Though financial terms were not disclosed, Reuters has reported the value of the acquisition to be nearly $4 billion.
Founded in 2003, Barracuda offers a broad suite of cybersecurity solutions across email protection, application security, network security and data protection that can be deployed and managed in both cloud and hybrid environments. The Company focuses on serving small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and has more than 200,000 customers worldwide across a variety of industries, including education, government, financial services, health care, retail, consumer goods and manufacturing.
During Thoma Bravo’s ownership, Barracuda expanded and enhanced its product suite, implemented best-in-class operational processes and successfully executed a number of strategic acquisitions, which together propelled the Company to profitable and accelerating growth at over $500mm of revenue and enabled more customers to comprehensively protect their employees, applications, networks and data. KKR will provide resources and expertise to further accelerate the Company’s growth and support its strategic expansion in key areas, including managed detection and response, extended detection and response, and secure access service edge technology.
Barracuda will implement KKR’s broad-based employee ownership program, which makes all employees owners in their respective businesses alongside KKR. This strategy is based on the belief that employee engagement is a key driver in building stronger companies. Since 2011, KKR has awarded billions of dollars of total equity value to over 45,000 non-management employees across more than 25 companies.
“We believe that with the support of KKR, we will continue to invest in growth and foster a culture that gives our team the resources and inspiration to continue to create and deliver the next generation of leading cybersecurity solutions for our customers and partners,” said Hatem Naguib, CEO of Barracuda. “We are very appreciative of Thoma Bravo’s support and very excited to be working with KKR on this next phase of Barracuda’s journey.”
The transaction is anticipated to close by the end of the year, subject to customary conditions.