(Bloomberg) -- After a relatively barren few years for deals, backers of the world’s biggest private equity firms have one thing on their minds: returns.
For Thoma Bravo, the Chicago-based buyout group known for its big bets on enterprise software, a couple of transactions announced across a few days in late July is helping the firm to buck the logjam narrative that’s plaguing the buyouts industry.
The firm sold education software provider Instructure Holdings Inc. to KKR & Co. for $4.8 billion including debt and 50% of its stake in exchange operator Nasdaq Inc. for $2.7 billion. Those transactions generated realizations of about $2.9 billion and $2.4 billion respectively, according to a letter to Thoma Bravo’s investors reviewed by Bloomberg News. The fund had owned almost 84% of Instructure’s outstanding shares.
Thoma Bravo also “completely closed out” its investment in software observability platform Dynatrace Inc., according to the letter.
A representative for Thoma Bravo declined to comment.
In netting investors of its buyout fund roughly $5.2 billion in the course of a week, Thoma Bravo has returned about $19.4 billion since January 2023, the letter shows. From 2020 to 2024, realizations grew to approximately $48 billion, compared with $15.5 billion from 2015 to 2019.
Beyond Instructure and trimming the Nasdaq position it inherited in 2023 in connection with the $10.5 billion sale of financial software provider Adenza Inc., the firm announced the sale of cybersecurity player Venafi Inc. to CyberArk Software Ltd. for $1.54 billion in May.
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