Two multi-billion dollar security-focused buyouts took center stage in August 2019 but overall financing activity shrunk to its lowest mark in four years, a new study by investment bank/consultancy Momentum Cyber said in its Cybersecurity Snapshot.
The month saw the acquisitions of Symantec’s Enterprise Assets by Broadcom for $10.7 billion & VMware’s buyout of Carbon Black for $2.1 billion.
Strategic deal volume in August spiked to 38 completed transactions (M&A + financing) totaling $13.3 billion in deal value. Of those, there were 16 M&A transactions valued at $12.9 billion and 22 financing deals worth $371 million in the month.
Here are M&A and financing deals for August 2019 highlights:
M&A activity.
- 16 M&A deals were announced with disclosed values of $12.9 billion.
- $13 billion enterprise value across top two M&A deals, involving public sellers.
- Of the 16 M&A transactions in August, the most active sectors were four deals in security consulting, two in application security, two in endpoint security, and two in network security.
Financing activity.
- Cybereason’s $200 million Series E funding led all financing rounds for August. Others included:
- AU10TIX’s $60 million private equity deal.
- Axonius’ $20 million Series B.
- Securit.ai’s $18 million Series A.
Additional financing highlights:
- 22 financing transactions completed with total capital raised of $371 million (median amount raised of $6 million).
- 59% of total financing deals were Early Stage to Series A. Median amount raised in such deals was $3 million.
- The most active financing sectors included: five in data security, four in risk & compliance, three in network security, and three in SecOps /IR/ threat intel.
On a 2019 year-to-date basis:
- Financing activity totaled $5.8 billion in total volume in 290 transactions, for a 10 percent slide.
- For the same period last year, YTD financing deal value was $6.4 billion.
Notable financing deals YTD include:
- Cybereason raised $200 million.
- OneTrust landed $200 million.
- Cloudflare secured $150 million.
M&A deal value YTD totaled:
- $19.8 billion in 113 transactions for a 23 percent.
- In the same period last year, M&A value totaled $16.1 billion.
In addition to Symantec/Broadcom and VMware/Carbon Black, notable M&A deals among key players YTD include:
- Jacobs acquired KeyW for $815 million.
- Insight bought Recorded Future for $780 million.
- Carbonite bought Webroot for $608.5 million.
