Thoma Bravo to buy data security company Barracuda Networks for $1.47 bn

Private equity firm Thoma Bravo yesterday struck a deal to buy data security company Barracuda Networks Inc for $1.47 billion in cash.

Thoma Bravo, which specialises in investing in software and technology companies, is offering to pay $27.55 per share, a premium of 16.3 per cent to Barracuda's Friday close.

Barracuda, which went public four years ago, will operate as a privately-held company and continue to focus on email security and data protection services.

The transaction is expected to close by the end of February 2018.

Founded in 2003 by Dean Drako, Michael Perone and Zach Levow, California-based Barracuda provides security, networking and storage products based on network appliances and cloud services.

The company's security products include products for protection against email, web surfing, web hackers and instant messaging threats such as spam, spyware, trojans, and viruses.

Its networking and storage products include web filtering, load balancing, application delivery controllers, message archiving, NG firewalls, backup services and data protection.

The company has over 150,000 customers and its clients include Boeing, Microsoft and the US Department of Defense.

The acquisition by Thomas Bravo comes more than a year after it acquired US software company Qlik Technologies for about $3 billion.

''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, CEO of Barracuda, in a statement.

''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,'' he added.