Thoma Bravos $12.3 billion purchase of Proofpoint is the largest private equity cloud deal
Summary
Even with private equity firms spending record amounts of cash for software in recent years, Thoma Bravo just trumped them all, announcing the biggest cloud buyout ever on Monday. The announcement comes four days after Thoma Bravo closed its prior top cloud acquisition — the $10.2 billion purchase of RealPage, which serves the real estate industry. The buyout firm has been building up a portfolio of cloud software vendors, focusing primarily on companies that have seen slowing growth rates and are selling at discounts to their peers. Founded in 2002, Proofpoint went public nine years ago and just passed $1 billion in annual revenue by providing software to stop malware and help businesses protect employees from phishing and other scams across mobile and cloud. "We believe this is a great exit for a company that has significantly decelerated over the past two years," wrote analysts at Mizuho Securities, in a note to clients.
