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Thoma Bravo agreed to buy Sophos in a recommended cash offer announced on 14 October 2019, offering $7.40 per share. The deal completed on 2 March 2020. The headline’s $3.8 billion refers to the reported equity purchase price; Thoma Bravo and Sophos described the deal at approximately $3.9 billion in enterprise or transaction-value terms. Those figures use different measures, not evidence that the price rose before closing.
How much did Thoma Bravo pay for Sophos?
Thoma Bravo announced a recommended cash offer of $7.40 per share for all issued and to-be-issued Sophos shares on 14 October 2019. The headline figure of $3.8 billion is commonly reported as the equity purchase price. In its offer announcement, Thoma Bravo gave an approximate enterprise value of $3.9 billion; Sophos described the completed cash transaction in March 2020 as valued at approximately $3.9 billion. Thoma Bravo’s offer announcement and Sophos’s completion release state the terms in their respective contexts.
Why are the deal figures $3.8 billion and $3.9 billion?
The amounts describe different valuation measures. The $3.8 billion figure is reported as the equity purchase price—the consideration for shareholders’ ownership interests. Enterprise value is a broader measure of a business’s value that accounts for its capital structure, including debt and cash. Thoma Bravo’s 2019 announcement gave approximately $3.9 billion as enterprise value, while Sophos’s 2020 release used approximately $3.9 billion for the completed transaction.
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Accordingly, the two figures should not be read as conflicting purchase prices or as proof the offer changed. The precise $7.40-per-share cash offer is the clearest measure of what shareholders were offered.
#1 Best Overall
- XGS 88 (Hardware Only) - Next-generation firewall appliance only; add a Sophos subscription to enable IPS, web security, VPN, and advanced threat defense.
- Equipped with 4 x 2.5 GE copper ports, supporting up to 9.9 Gbps firewall performance for small offices and branch deployments.
- Purpose built next generation firewall hardware engineered for high performance, visibility, and reliable operation in business networks.
- SD-WAN optimization provides resilient connectivity and intelligent traffic routing across multiple WAN connections.
- VPN ready architecture supports secure site to site networking and encrypted remote employee access.
When was the acquisition announced and completed?
- 14 October 2019: Thoma Bravo announced its recommended cash offer following agreement with Sophos’s board. The London Stock Exchange regulatory announcement describes financing through Thoma Bravo fund equity and debt arranged under an interim facilities agreement. Read the LSE announcement.
- 2 March 2020: Sophos announced that the acquisition had completed as a cash transaction.
What Sophos did at the time of the deal
Sophos was a cybersecurity software and managed-services company. At completion, it described a portfolio managed through Sophos Central, spanning endpoint and server, network, mobile, email, and cloud security. Its managed threat response service offered a security team for threat hunting, detection, and response around the clock, according to the company.
In its March 2020 completion announcement, Sophos reported more than 53,000 reseller and managed service provider partners, protection for more than 420,000 organizations, and 100 million users. Those are Sophos-reported figures from the time of the acquisition, not current totals. Sophos also said its next-generation portfolio accounted for more than 60% of company billings and had grown 44% year over year; those, too, are historical company claims rather than independent market statistics. Sophos’s completion announcement provides the company’s figures.
Rank #2
- XGS 118 (Hardware Only) - Next-generation firewall appliance only; add a Sophos subscription to enable IPS, web security, VPN, and advanced threat defense.
- 9 x 2.5 GE copper ports and 1 SFP fiber port, delivering up to 15.5 Gbps firewall performance for mid sized organizations.
- Purpose built next generation firewall hardware engineered for high performance, visibility, and reliable operation in business networks.
- SD-WAN optimization provides resilient connectivity and intelligent traffic routing across multiple WAN connections.
- VPN ready architecture supports secure site to site networking and encrypted remote employee access.
What Thoma Bravo said would happen next
After completion, Sophos CEO Kris Hagerman described the company’s plans as a private business: “As a private company, Sophos intends to further accelerate our mission to protect people from cybercrime by developing powerful and intuitive products and services that provide the world’s most effective cybersecurity for organizations of any size.” This was Sophos’s stated intention, not an independent assessment of its products. The completion announcement includes the statement.
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Thoma Bravo’s current portfolio page describes Sophos as offering endpoint, network, email, and cloud security, managed detection and response, and related services through resellers, managed service providers, and managed security service providers. These are current portfolio descriptions and may change. Thoma Bravo’s Sophos portfolio page provides its present-day overview.
Rank #3
- Network administrators' main fears are that SSL inspection will have a performance impact or cause something to break, impacting the user experience. Sophos Firewall removes the blind spots caused by encrypted traffic by allowing you to use SSL inspection while maintaining performance efficiency.
- TLS 1.3 Decryption: Remove an enormous blind spot with intelligent TLS inspection that’s fast and effective, supporting the latest standards with extensive exceptions and point-and-click policy tools to make your job easy.
- Deep Packet Inspection: Stop the latest ransomware and breaches with high-performance streaming deep packet inspection, including next-gen IPS, web protection, and app control, as well as deep learning and sandboxing powered by SophosLabs Intelix.
- Sophos Firewall and the XGS Series appliances with dedicated Xstream Flow Processors enable the ultimate in application acceleration, high-performance TLS inspection, and powerful threat protection
- Specifications: Firewall throughput: 35,000 Mbps| Firewall IMIX: 20,000 Mbps | Firewall Latency (64 byte UDP): 4 µs | IPS throughput: 7,000 Mbps | Threat Protection throughput: 1,400 Mbps
Thoma Bravo announced in 2024 that Sophos would acquire Secureworks. That is a later development, separate from the 2019 Thoma Bravo acquisition of Sophos; the announcement alone does not establish the current status of integration. Thoma Bravo’s announcement covers the later deal.
Quick Recap
Best Value
- XGS 128 (Hardware Only) - Next-generation firewall appliance only; add a Sophos subscription to enable IPS, web security, VPN, and advanced threat defense.
- 9 x 2.5 GE copper ports and 1 SFP fiber port, providing up to 19.1 Gbps firewall throughput for larger offices.
- Purpose built next generation firewall hardware engineered for high performance, visibility, and reliable operation in business networks.
- SD-WAN optimization provides resilient connectivity and intelligent traffic routing across multiple WAN connections.
- VPN ready architecture supports secure site to site networking and encrypted remote employee access.
Rank #4
- XGS 118 with 3 Years Standard Protection - Next-generation firewall appliance with Standard Protection subscription providing firewall, VPN, intrusion prevention, web security, and application control, managed through Sophos Central for unified policies and reporting.
- 9 x 2.5 GE copper ports and 1 SFP fiber port, delivering up to 15.5 Gbps firewall performance for mid sized organizations.
- Protects users from ransomware, malware, phishing, and intrusion attempts before they reach endpoints or applications.
- SD-WAN features deliver reliable, optimized application performance and intelligent multi link failover.
- Includes Standard Protection – Comprehensive security package with firewall, intrusion prevention, VPN, web security, and application control to defend against everyday threats and keep business operations safe.
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