Exostar — a cloud-centric company set up by defense giants BAE Systems, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Rolls-Royce to manage highly sensitive supply chains — has been bought by private equity (PE) firm Thoma Bravo.
The Exostar platform serves a claimed 150,000 organisations. The terms of the deal were not disclosed by the Chicago-headquartered PE fund.
The acquisition is the latest indicator of growing investor interest in supply chain optimisation and security: a segment that has come under the spotlight, following disruptions caused by the COVID-19 outbreak this year; the pandemic ground factories and shipping to a halt.
What is Exostar?
Herndon, Virginia-based Exostar’s offerings include software to help visualise, track and manage enterprise procurement chains, including supply chain visibility, eSourcing /eProcurement, and Source to Pay/Settle processes. It also offers single sign-on (SSO) and identity and access management (IAM).
“Thoma Bravo’s strategic investment is expected to help Exostar accelerate business growth and broaden its existing customer base”, the private equity fund — which has been a major investor in cybersecurity firms in recent years — said today. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
(Thoma Bravo also completed a $3.9 billion buyout of the UK’s Sophos in March this year. Over the years it has bought more than 200 software and technology companies worth upwards of $50 billion.)
The PE fund, which has $35 billion in assets under management, said it would tap its expertise in “enterprise software solutions for complex industries” in order to “expand the company’s current capabilities, particularly in cybersecurity, to position the company for further growth”.
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Paul Kaminski, who has served as Chairman of the Board at Exostar since the company’s inception, said, “Exostar has been a successful endeavor for its six joint venture owners over the past two decades.
“Now, the company has reached a point where a more growth-focused model can allow Exostar to further innovate and expand its capabilities. ”
“Exostar’s identity access management and secure collaboration software is utilized by some of the most respected and well-known enterprise customers in aerospace and defense, life sciences and healthcare,” added Carl Press, a Principal at Thoma Bravo in a canned statement.
“The company’s understanding of complex organizations’ procurement and collaboration needs is a key differentiator inherent in its products.”
