Highlights:

  • Imperva, headquartered in San Mateo, California, is a major player in the enterprise cybersecurity software industry, exhibiting a revenue of over USD 500 million in the past 12 months.
  • Thales anticipates the acquisition to deliver USD 110 million in annual run-rate synergies, including USD 50 million in cost reductions and USD 60 million worth of new revenue opportunities.

French defense company Thales SA eyes acquiring cybersecurity software maker Imperva Inc. for a whopping USD 3.6 billion, as announced recently. The deal involves Thales purchasing Imperva from Thoma Bravo, a technology-focused private equity firm that acquired Imperva in 2018 for USD 2.1 million, signaling the potential for a significant return on investment.

Patrice Caine, Chief Executive Officer of Thales, said, “With this acquisition, we are seizing a unique opportunity to accelerate our cybersecurity capabilities and are taking an important step towards our ambition to build a world-class global cybersecurity integrated player.”

Imperva, headquartered in San Mateo, California, is a major player in the enterprise cybersecurity software industry, exhibiting a revenue of over USD 500 million in the past 12 months from a substantial customer base of 6,200-plus clients, including more than a third of the esteemed Fortune 100 list.

The primary focus of Imperva lies in application security, offering a firewall that aids companies in thwarting malicious network traffic from infiltrating their applications. Additionally, Imperva provides tools to filter out harmful requests sent to websites, application programming interfaces, and serverless workloads.

In cases where malicious requests manage to bypass a company’s defenses and reach their target workload, Imperva offers a unique runtime protection platform. This platform embeds code called sensors within workloads, actively scanning for any breach attempts.

Imperva’s expertise extends to various other markets, offering software to detect sensitive data assets within a company’s network and assess their security. Additionally, they provide a content delivery network to enhance website loading times.

Thales plans to merge Imperva into its digital identity and security business post acquisition. This business specializes in providing cybersecurity software for enterprises and offers devices to regulate physical access to facilities.

Thales foresees that the Imperva acquisition will positively impact its digital identity and security business, with expectations of organic growth between six and seven percent from 2024 to 2027. The company aims to boost the unit’s EBIT margin to 16.5% during the same period.

Thales anticipates the acquisition to deliver USD 110 million in annual run-rate synergies, including USD 50 million in cost reductions and USD 60 million worth of new revenue opportunities.

This acquisition is the latest in a series of strategic moves by Thales to expand its cybersecurity business, following previous deals with cybersecurity provider Tesserent Ltd. and manage security providers S21sec and Excellium, further solidifying Thales’ position in the ever-evolving cybersecurity industry.