News that is private the capital group Thoma Bravo is purchase of Ping Identity for $2.8 billion in cash broke earlier today, marking the beginning of the end of Ping’s life as a public company (at least for now).
Thoma Bravo will pay $28.50 per share in an all-cash transaction, a price that TechCrunch noted is roughly a 63% premium over the company’s pre-announcement share price. News of the sale came after Ping reported earnings which missed both profit and revenue grades in the second quarter.
Given that M&A activity has been muted compared to the frenetic pace of 2021, the deal is eye-catching. To better understand the transaction, we’ll dive into Ping’s numbers to see what its sale price can tell us about the value of software companies today, and then take a riff on the identity market itself, part of the tech space with few public players and a recent history of falling values.
What does $2.8 billion buy you today?
Given that Ping announced its earnings at the same time as its sale of Thoma Bravo, we can directly compare its latest results to the recently disclosed sale price.