Starting the short Thanksgiving week out with a bang, Oracle (NYSE: ORCL) announced it has agreed to acquire Dyn, a cloud-based IP and DNS provider that monitors, controls and optimizes internet applications and cloud services—a deal with a reported price tag of just over $600 million. In another IT M&A deal, Symantec (NASDAQ: SYMC) agreed to acquire LifeLock (NYSE: LOCK), a provider of identity-theft protections to users such as alerts and credit monitoring, for $2.3 billion. Both follow significant acquisitions for Oracle and Symantec in the rapidly evolving and increasingly overlapping cybersecurity and cloud-computing spaces.
Oracle
Although its stock has never been publicly traded, Dyn should sound familiar. The company was a victim of last month’s massive DDoS attack that shut down the popular sites of its major corporate clients, including Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX), Twitter (NYSE: TWTR) and Pfizer (NYSE: PFE). The deal adds Dyn’s IaaS and PaaS verticals to Oracle’s cloud-computing platform for enterprise customers. Dyn, which recovered from the October attack after several hours, is backed by both PE and VC investors such as Pamplona Capital Management, Borealis Ventures and North Bridge Growth Equity. It most recently secured a $50 million Series B in May at a $356 million valuation, according to the PitchBook Platform.
Bessemer Venture Partners stands to gain from LifeLock’s acquisition after leading a $4.5 million Series A for the company in 2006. Although LifeLock did end up completing a $750 million IPO in 2012, BVP didn’t fully liquidate its investment and reportedly still holds a 5.9% stake valued at $144 million.
Oracle’s share price remained virtually unchanged on news of its latest acquisition, finishing up just three cents at $39.89 apiece. Symantec also closed up for the day at $24.52 per share, or 3.24%.
The Dyn deal caps an acquisitive month for Oracle, with the announcement coming hot on the heels of the $9.3 billion pickup of NetSuite that closed on November 7. For Symantec, the LifeLock deal adds to its growing suite of consumer-facing products following the August acquisition of Blue Coat for $4.65 billion—just two weeks after the cybersecurity company went public. With that deal done, Silver Lake plugged another $500 million into Symantec while Blue Coat’s PE-backer Bain Capital agreed to a $750 million purchase of convertible notes in the combined company.
Article by Adam Putz, PitchBook
