[NEW YORK] Salesforce is in talks to acquire software company Informatica, rebooting a pursuit that fell through last year, sources familiar with the matter said.
If a deal is reached, it could be announced as soon as next week, according to the sources, who asked to not be identified because the discussions are private. No final decision has been made and talks may still falter or another buyer could emerge, they said.
Cloud Software Group, formerly known as Citrix Systems, has been interested in the asset too, the sources said.
Shares in Informatica rose as much as 28 per cent on Friday (May 23) for their biggest intraday gain. The stock closed up 17.5 per cent in New York, giving the company a market value of about US$6.8 billion. Salesforce finished the session 3.6 per cent lower for a market capitalisation of around US$262 billion.
Redwood City, California-based Informatica also has about US$1.9 billion in total debt, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
Representatives for Salesforce and Cloud Software Group declined to comment. Spokespeople for Informatica and private equity firm Permira, which backs Informatica, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Informatica, which helps customers manage their data in the cloud, has long been a potential takeover target. San Francisco-based Salesforce held talks to buy the company just over a year ago, Bloomberg News reported at the time. The talks cooled with the parties struggling to agree to terms.
A deal would represent one of Salesforce’s biggest-ever acquisitions. It could be strategic given the intensifying competition in the market for artificial intelligence-driven databases, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Sunil Rajgopal wrote in a note on Friday. But overlap between Informatica and Salesforce’s MuleSoft unit could attract regulatory scrutiny, Rajgopal wrote.
Informatica was taken private in 2015 by Permira and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) in a US$5.3 billion transaction. They took the company public again in 2021. Permira, with almost 32 per cent of Informatica’s shares, remains the company’s largest stockholder, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. CPPIB owns about 25 per cent of the shares. BLOOMBERG
