BY Richard Summerfield
Data analytics firm Cloudera Inc. is to be taken private by private equity firms KKR & Co and Clayton Dubilier & Rice LLC (CD&R) in a $4.7bn deal.
According to a regulatory filing announcing the deal, Cloudera shareholders will receive $16 per share in cash, a premium of over 24 percent to Cloudera’s last close on Friday and a 30 percent premium to the company’s 30-day volume weighted average share price.
The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2021, subject to shareholder and regulatory approval. The board of directors of Cloudera has unanimously approved the transaction and recommends that the Cloudera shareholders approve the transaction and adopt the merger agreement.
Cloudera, which has activist investor Carl Icahn as its largest shareholder, has been exploring a potential sale since mid-2020 after receiving takeover interest from several parties.
“This transaction provides substantial and certain value to our shareholders while also accelerating Cloudera’s long-term path to hybrid cloud leadership for analytics that span the complete data lifecycle - from the Edge to AI,” said Rob Bearden, chief executive of Cloudera. “We believe that as a private company with the expertise and support of experienced investors such as CD&R and KKR, Cloudera will have the resources and flexibility to drive product-led growth and expand our addressable market opportunity.”
“We very much look forward to working with Cloudera as it continues to execute its long-term transformation strategy,” said Jeff Hawn, operating partner at CD&R, who will also serve as chairman of the company upon close of the transaction. “The company has made significant progress establishing the Cloudera Data Platform (CDP) as a leader in hybrid and multi-cloud analytics, and we believe that our experience and capabilities can offer valuable support to accelerate expansion into new products and markets.”
“We have followed the Cloudera story closely for a number of years and are pleased to be supporting its mission of helping companies make better use of their data in the ever-evolving hybrid IT environment,” said John Park, partner and head of Americas technology private equity at KKR. “We are excited to contribute to Cloudera’s accelerated innovation efforts as a private company.”
Cloudera provides cloud-based software and a platform to enterprises for data management and insights generation. The firm caters to several industries including finance, healthcare and government agencies.
News: KKR, CD&R take data analytics firm Cloudera private for $4.7 bln