Insights
Deal commentary, market structure and corporate development practice — written alongside a research base maintained daily.
Silver Lake and Thoma Bravo own 59% of N-able, have held the asset since 2016, and ran a sale process in 2024 at roughly three times today's equity value. The enterprise trades near 2.1× revenue. The fourth pass through the AI-acquirer screen, and the first where the likely buyer is already on the register…
In August Trend Micro held its revenue guide and cut its profit guide by ¥12 billion because its cloud bill nearly doubled. The AI-acquirer thesis says a platform replaces people; Trend is running that experiment on itself, and the first invoice has arrived…
Nine days ago Tenable borrowed $800 million at a quarter-point coupon, retired its term loan, and bought back $170 million of stock on the day of pricing. That is not the balance sheet of a distressed seller — which is exactly why it is the control case for the screen…
Buyers circled Rapid7 at roughly $2.5 billion in October 2024. Today the entire enterprise is priced near $0.9 billion — about 1.1× ARR. Running the AI-acquirer playbook against it, lever by lever…
Two things happened this month that belong side by side. On August 4, the largest buyout in history closed. Nine days later, the same firm went looking for something bigger. Neither is being paid for the way we…