(Bloomberg) -- Tenable Holdings Inc. is exploring options including a potential sale after receiving takeover interest, according to people familiar with the matter, as dealmaking in the cybersecurity sector heats up.
The Columbia, Maryland-based security software company is working with advisers, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing confidential information.
Shares in Tenable rose as much as 14% on Tuesday, their biggest intraday gain since October 2022. The stock closed up 9.3% to $47.15 in New York, giving the company a market value of about $5.6 billion.
The company could interest both private equity firms and strategic buyers, the people said. Deliberations are still in the early stages and there’s no certainty they’ll lead to a transaction, they said.
A representative for Tenable declined to comment.
Exposure Management
A so-called exposure management company, Tenable helps more than 44,000 enterprises to understand and reduce cyber risk. Its Tenable One platform offers cybersecurity teams a unified view of all assets to better manage application, cloud and identity vulnerabilities.
The company had a net loss of almost $48 million on revenue of $826 million for the year ended March 31.
Tenable Chief Executive Officer Amit Yoran previously served as director of the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team under the Department of Homeland Security.
Yoran founded managed security service provider Riptech Inc., which was acquired in 2002 by Symantec Corp. He later started network forensics company NetWitness Corp., which was eventually sold to RSA.
Sector Consolidating
The broader cybersecurity sector has been thrust into the spotlight in recent weeks after threat intelligence and response player Crowdstrike Holdings Inc. issued a defective update to its software that took millions of Microsoft Corp. Windows devices offline globally. Crowdstrike shares have lost about a third of their value since the outage.
A possible sale of Tenable would come as the cybersecurity market moves toward consolidation, according to Damian Reimertz, a senior associate analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence. Of the top three vulnerability-management competitors, Tenable was alone in gaining share from 2019 to 2023 — at the expense of Qualys Inc. and Rapid7 Inc., Reimertz said.
Israeli cybersecurity startup Wiz Inc., which connects with storage providers like Microsoft Azure to scan for threats in the cloud, earlier this month turned down a takeover bid of as much as $23 billion from Alphabet Inc.’s Google. Wiz Chief Executive Officer Assaf Rappaport said the company would instead target an initial public offering.
(Updates with CEO’s background in eighth paragraph.)
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