BY Richard Summerfield
Turn/River Capital has agreed to acquire SolarWinds – a provider of IT management and observability software – in a deal worth approximately $4.4bn.
Under the terms of the agreement, Turn/River will acquire SolarWinds for $18.50 per share, a price which represents a 35 percent premium over the company’s volume-weighted average closing stock price for the 90 trading days prior to the announcement of the deal.
Upon completion of the transaction, SolarWinds will be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange and will transition to private ownership. The company will continue operating under its existing name and remain headquartered in Austin, Texas. The deal has received unanimous approval from SolarWinds’ board of directors and is expected to close in Q2 2025, pending regulatory approvals and other customary conditions. Thoma Bravo and Silver Lake, which collectively hold approximately 65 percent of SolarWinds’ voting securities, have provided written consent for the acquisition, eliminating the need for additional shareholder approval.
“We have built a great track record of helping customers accelerate business transformations through simple, powerful, secure solutions designed for hybrid and multi-cloud environments,” said Sudhakar Ramakrishna, president and chief executive of SolarWinds. “We now look forward to partnering with Turn/River to deliver operational resilience solutions for our customers on our SolarWinds Platform, leveraging our premier observability, monitoring, and service desk solutions.”
“SolarWinds is a global leader in software that helps a wide range of businesses securely manage and optimize their systems, networks, and IT infrastructure,” said Dominic Ang, founder and managing partner of Turn/River Capital. “Their deep commitment to understanding and solving customer needs has led to decades of innovation, impact, and consistent growth. We are incredibly excited to partner with SolarWinds. By pairing our team of software operators and investors with their relentless focus on customer success, together we aim to accelerate growth and further innovation.”
The deal for SolarWinds is the latest in a series of ownership transitions the company has experienced over the last decade. Thoma Bravo and Silver Lake initially took the company private in 2016 before relisting it on the public market nearly three years later.
The acquisition comes more than four years after a notable cyber security breach linked to Russian state actors. The 2020 attack impacted US government agencies, including the State Department, the FBI and branches of the US military, as well as private sector organisations.
News: Turn/River Capital to acquire US-based SolarWinds for $4.4bn