Thoma Bravo plans to acquire enterprise identity management service Ping Identity in an all-cash $2.8B deal; Ping reported $72M in Q2 revenue, below estimates
After a tough few months in the markets for Ping Identity, the enterprise identity management company today announced a big move …
Context & Ripple Effects
Ping Identity's run as a public company ends where it began with Thoma Bravo's math: it listed in 2019 on the back of a $188M IPO that valued it at $1.16B, and three years later the buyout firm is paying $2.8B in cash to take it private — a premium that arrives just as Ping's Q2 revenue of $72M came in below estimates.
The buyer is no stranger to the category. Earlier in 2022 Thoma Bravo agreed to acquire SailPoint for $6.9B, making Ping the second identity-security company it has moved on this year alone.
First-order effects
- Ping's public shareholders get an all-cash exit at $2.8B, roughly 2.4x its 2019 IPO valuation, while the identity management market loses one of its few independent listed vendors after a quarter that missed estimates.
Second-order effects
- Thoma Bravo's identity roll-up accelerates: within two months it follows the Ping deal by agreeing to buy ForgeRock for $2.3B, putting access management (Ping), identity governance (SailPoint) and identity verification (ForgeRock) under one owner and squeezing the pricing room of remaining standalone competitors.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, enterprise identity becomes a private-equity-consolidated layer rather than a venture-stage category — concentrating control of who authenticates into corporate systems in a handful of PE-owned portfolios just as machine and agent identities expand what 'identity' has to cover.
The trend: Enterprise identity management is consolidating into private equity hands, with Thoma Bravo assembling a multi-company identity portfolio deal by deal through 2022.