Thoma Bravo sells Entrust to Datacard

Thoma Bravo has sold portfolio company Entrust to Datacard Group. Financial terms were not disclosed.

PRESS RELEASE

Thoma Bravo, LLC, a leading private equity investment firm, announced today the sale of portfolio company Entrust, Inc., a global leader in securing digital identities and information, to Datacard Group. Financial terms were not disclosed. The sale is expected to close by year-end.

“Thoma Bravo worked closely with Entrust management to grow the business into an industry leader through continued product innovation and execution of operational best practices”

“Thoma Bravo worked closely with Entrust management to grow the business into an industry leader through continued product innovation and execution of operational best practices,” said Thoma Bravo managing partner Scott Crabill. “We are proud of the work accomplished by everyone at Entrust to better serve the critical needs of customers while organically accelerating revenue growth and increasing profitability.”

With a capital injection and operational expertise from Thoma Bravo, Entrust’s management team transformed Entrust into a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company since going private in 2009. In that period, Entrust has organically increased revenues from $91M to approximately $120M in 2013, and has increased SaaS and subscription revenues to nearly 70% of the company’s total revenue with customer renewal rates at more than 95%. Coming out of its fourth full year as a Thoma Bravo company, Entrust continues to accelerate its business and is experiencing more than 10% total growth and 30% product growth in 2013. The management team’s transformation of the business has led to EBITDA of 34% of revenue in 2013, up from 7% its last year as a public company in 2008.

“Thoma Bravo was management-friendly and brought a partnership model to the table that was critical to our success,” said Entrust CEO Bill Conner. “We were able to leverage the firm’s metrics and experience to bring about a transformation of software authentication to mobile devices and the cloud. Today Entrust is in a stronger position than we’ve ever been.”

“Thoma Bravo’s investment in Entrust marked the firm’s first investment in the software security sector, and paved the way for the substantial and growing portfolio of software security companies that we invest in today,” said Seth Boro, managing partner at Thoma Bravo. “Entrust’s accomplishments surrounding growth and profitability over the past four years have enabled the company to become a top performing business not only in the security software space, but also across the broader software industry.”

Robert Sayle, principal at Thoma Bravo, commented “by achieving its goals of creating industry-leading technology, strong financial performance, and a transition to a SaaS business, Entrust has established itself as a platform for success entering its next phase with Datacard Group.”

Entrust was acquired by Thoma Bravo in July of 2009.

About Thoma Bravo, LLC

Thoma Bravo is a leading private equity investment firm building on a 30+ year history of providing equity and strategic support to experienced management teams and growing companies. The firm applies its own industry consolidation investment strategy and process, which seeks to create value by partnering with a company’s management to improve business operations and make strategic acquisitions that will accelerate growth. Thoma Bravo invests across multiple industries, with a particular focus on application and infrastructure software and financial and business services. The firm currently manages a series of private equity funds representing more than $4 billion of equity commitments.

About Entrust, Inc.

A trusted provider of identity-based security solutions, Entrust secures governments, enterprises and financial institutions in more than 5,000 organizations spanning 85 countries. Entrust’s award-winning software authentication platforms manage today’s most secure identity credentials, addressing customer pain points for cloud and mobile security, physical and logical access, citizen eID initiatives, certificate management and SSL. For more information about Entrust products and services, call 888-690-2424, email entrust@entrust.com or visit www.entrust.com.

Contacts
Thoma Bravo, LLC
LANE PR (for Thoma Bravo)
Amber Roberts, 212-302-5964
amber@lanepr.com