Sumit Dhawan, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER of Proofpoint, took the reins as head of the cybersecurity firm in 2022, a year after it was gotten by Thoma Bravo for $12.3 billion. He’s been pressing the company to think about calculated possibilities such as mergings and purchases of smaller sized cybersecurity gamers to enhance the firm’s market development and promote market debt consolidation.
Proofpoint
LONDON– Privately- held cybersecurity company Proofpoint is discovering touching outside capitalists for pre-IPO funding and the factor to consider of mergings and purchases of smaller sized cyber firms as it looks for a go back to public markets in 2026, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER Sumit Dhawan informed.
“We are looking at potentially exploring public markets sometime in the next 12 to 18 months,” Dhawan, that took the reins as Proofpoint’s recently assigned principal in 2022, a year after the firm was gotten by personal equity company Thoma Bravo.
Dhawan included that the timing of Proofpoint’s IPO would certainly still continue to be based on basic market problems along with the end result of the 2024 united state governmental political election.
Since Proofpoint’s 2021 acquistion by Thoma Bravo and Dhawan’s succeeding visit as chief executive officer, firm administration has actually been pressing the company to think about calculated possibilities such as mergings and purchases of smaller sized cybersecurity companies to promote market debt consolidation.
Noting that there are presently a lot of gamers in the cybersecurity market, Dhawan claimed that Proofpoint is presently seeking procurement targets that supply a “strategic fit” for the firm– for the appropriate cost.
“It’s happened in many other technology spaces — it happened with infrastructure, it has happened in the application platform space — where you start building fewer providers but richer platforms and, as a result, there will be consolidation,” Dhawan informed in a special meeting today.
“There are at this point in time, 2,000 or so non-profitable cybersecurity companies that are venture-backed, so clearly they’ll either get consolidated or potentially not exist. Because there’s no way any market can have that many players. So it’s going to happen, it’s bound to happen.”
Dhawan claimed he’s discovering there’s a little bit of a “bid-ask spread” on the market presently when it involves cybersecurity possibilities, suggesting target firms are requesting for even more cash at the price than the evaluations they’re being supplied. But he included that he’s seeing some “great opportunities” on the market.
The roadway from personal to public
Founded in 2002 in Silicon Valley, Proofpoint makes innovation that assists firms avoid phishing efforts and various other cyberattacks throughout a variety of systems, consisting of e-mail, social media sites, mobile phones, and the cloud.
Proofpoint went public in the united state in 2012, yet consequently delisted after Thoma Bravo got the firm in a $12.3 billion deal in 2021. The buyout came after investor concerns over a deceleration in revenue growth.
Now, Proofpoint is once again looking to tap the public markets.
“We are a little bit different from typical companies going to IPO,” Dhawan said. “They tend to be smaller. They tend to have a very different profile. They tend to have uncertainty in terms of profitability, and they tend to not be in position to easily consolidate.”
Taking Proofpoint public wouldn’t mark the first time a company Thoma Bravo acquired in a private equity buyout has done an IPO for a second time. In 2019, cybersecurity firm Dynatrace, which Thoma Bravo took private in a 2014 buyout, went public again in a New York listing.
Proofpoint will go through “multiple rounds” of financing to expand ownership of the company by other private equity investors, Dhawan told , adding that private placements — sales of shares to pre-selected investors as opposed to general sales to the public — are among options it’s considering.
“We’re close to starting the process” for fundraising from investors beyond its private equity owners, Dhawan said. However, he stressed the firm hasn’t officially set off this process.
Proofpoint’s boss said he hopes that what separates his company from other tech and cybersecurity firms seeking a similar IPO route, is a good balance of growth and profitability, double-digit growth, and strong leadership in its market.
