Thoma Bravo finds the SaaSpocalypse hasn’t killed off all the deals
Semafor ·
The private equity giant is selling a $1.5 billion stake in healthcare cybersecurity and software company Imprivata.
Thoma Bravo has been forging a path out of the SaaSpocalypse, after the sector was virtually left for dead by investors earlier this year.
The private equity firm is selling a $1.5 billion stake in cybersecurity-software company Imprivata, as part of a plan to recapitalize the $5 billion company, said people familiar with the matter. JPMorgan and Evercore are leading the sale process. Thoma took the company private a decade ago in a deal that valued the company at around half a billion dollars.
British cybersecurity and software company Sophos, another Thoma venture, also recently priced a loan at 5 percentage points over its benchmark rate, or around 9% all in, after struggling to strike a deal with existing lenders or refinance with private credit firms.
Borrowing at such a rate used to be considered expensive, especially in the liquid market, but is now seen as competitive amid an otherwise stuck market for software company debt.
Thoma Bravo declined to comment for this story.
Investors pulled out of software services companies earlier this year fearing that agentic artificial intelligence, which can code bespoke programs, would render the companies obsolete.
The so-called SaaSpocalypse ensued, and in addition to a selloff in shares of public software companies, investment firms that concentrated private investments in software suffered losses on their holdings and investor withdrawals.
After an initial panic, investors recognized that AI adoption has been slow, and some mission-critical functions are proving tougher to displace inside big corporate workflows.
Talk of a slowdown in model development also appears to have lengthened the runway for legacy software providers. Thoma, which has been through cycles before, is the first to brave the post-panic market.
Thoma Bravo sold Command Alkon to Francisco Partners in August and combined construction software company HCSS with the Build & Construct segment of Germany’s Nemetschek Group, allowing Thoma to maintain a minority stake.