Broadcom will sell Veracode, acquired last year by CA, for $950M to Thoma Bravo as it broadens its security portfolio.

Kelly Sheridan, Former Senior Editor, Dark Reading

November 5, 2018

3 Min Read

Thoma Bravo today announced it will acquire Veracode from Broadcom, which has officially closed its purchase of CA Technologies and plans to sell its application security platform for $950 million in cash.

Veracode provides a software-as-a-service platform to detect and address security issues during the software development lifecycle. Its Application Security Platform is geared toward enterprise pros looking to manage risk posture across their application portfolio.

CA acquired Veracode in 2017 for $614M in an effort to strengthen its position in secure application development. The plan at the time was to bring together CA's security and DevOps portfolios with a SaaS platform that could integrate security into software development.

When Broadcom agreed to acquire CA for $18.9 billion in cash earlier this year, Veracode was part of the deal. Broadcom's goal in buying the enterprise software firm was to improve its enterprise focus, add recurring revenue, and channel its focus on infrastructure technology. Now, with the purchase completed, it's selling the company CA acquired a little over a year ago.

Thoma Bravo will buy Veracode in a transaction expected to close in Q4 2018. This marks the latest enterprise security investment for the private equity firm, which is known in the cybersecurity industry because of the value of companies it buys and investmetns in makes. It's not a technology vendor, but its portfolio of software companies has revenues totaling $3.0B.

The private equity firm, which focuses on application and infrastructure software, has now acquired more than 30 security firms. In October 2018 it agreed to acquire Imperva for $2.1B. A few months before, it completed a majority investment in identity and access management platform Centrify; in July, it completed a majority investment in LogRhythm's security information and event management platform.

Other companies in Thoma Bravo's portfolio include SailPoint, Barracuda Networks, Bomgar, BlueCoat Systems, SonicWall, and Entrust. It also has invested, and been involved with decision-making in, businesses including McAfee, Dynatrace, Kofax, and Digital Insight.

Veracode's current senior vice president and general manager, Sam King, will become the company's CEO as part of the Thoma Bravo acquisition. She anticipates the deal will broaden Veracode's reach; right now, the company has more than 2,000 customers, it reports.

"Partnering with Thoma Bravo, a proven security software investor, is expected to extend our market reach and further fuel our innovation so that we can offer the broadest software security platform and empower us to accelerate growth — all to allow us to transform the way companies achieve their software security goals," King says in a statement.

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About the Author(s)

Kelly Sheridan

Former Senior Editor, Dark Reading

Kelly Sheridan was formerly a Staff Editor at Dark Reading, where she focused on cybersecurity news and analysis. She is a business technology journalist who previously reported for InformationWeek, where she covered Microsoft, and Insurance & Technology, where she covered financial services. Sheridan earned her BA in English at Villanova University. You can follow her on Twitter @kellymsheridan.

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