Sophos Announces Completion of Take-Private Acquisition by Thoma Bravo

Sophos announced the completion of its acquisition by Thoma Bravo, a leading private equity firm focused on the software and technology-enabled services sectors, in a cash transaction that values Sophos at approximately USD 3.9 billion. The acquisition offer was announced on Oct. 14, 2019.

Under the terms of the agreement, Sophos stockholders receive USD 7.40 per share. The price per share represents a 168% premium to its IPO share price in June 2015. Stockholders voted to approve the transaction on Dec. 3, 2019. With the completion of the acquisition, Sophos’ common stock has ceased trading on the London Stock Exchange.

“Sophos is excited to work with Thoma Bravo as we begin our next chapter of growth and success, continuing in our mission to deliver the world’s most effective next-generation cybersecurity technology,” said Kris Hagerman, CEO, Sophos. “Our transition to become a fully next-gen cybersecurity leader continues to rapidly progress. Last quarter, our next-gen product portfolio represented over 60% of our entire business, and grew 44% year-over-year. And very recently, we launched our most significant network security technology ever, the Sophos XG Firewall with Xstream architecture. With Thoma Bravo as a partner, we believe we can accelerate our progress and get to the future even faster, with dramatic benefits for our customers, our partners and our company as a whole.”

Sophos partners with more than 53,000 resellers and managed service providers to protect more than 420,000 organizations and 100 million users from the most advanced cyberthreats. Its comprehensive product portfolio is easily managed through Sophos Central, a single, integrated cloud-based management platform where solutions work together for real-time information sharing and threat response with Sophos’ unique synchronized security approach. Sophos Managed Threat Response services provide an additional 24/7 security team for fully-managed threat hunting, detection and response spanning across endpoint and firewall.

“Sophos has been constantly raising the bar with its industry-leading synchronized security, advanced deep learning technology and rapid growth within the MSP channel,” said Seth Boro, a managing partner at Thoma Bravo. “We are excited to partner with Sophos to help build upon their success as they further drive innovation in cybersecurity.”