Photographer: Jason Alden / Bloomberg
Photographer: Jason Alden / Bloomberg
Citrix Systems Inc. is in advanced talks to buy the company from the job management platform Wrike Inc. for more than $ 2 billion, according to people who know the subject.
An agreement for Wrike, owned by the technology-focused purchasing firm Vista Equity Partners could be reached as early as this week, people said, asking not to be identified because the information was private. It would be the largest acquisition to date by Citrix.
The deal has not been finalized and the talks could still break up.
Citrix and Wrike representatives did not respond to requests for comment. A Vista representative declined to comment.
A deal in excess of $ 2 billion would likely provide a substantial return on Vista investment. It would also be the largest acquisition to date of Citrix, according to data collected by Bloomberg.
Vista acquired a majority stake in Wrike, headquartered in San Jose, California, in 2018. That deal valued the company at $ 800 million, the Wall Street Journal reported at the time.
Citrix already sells some cloud and work-from-home products, but the acquisition will take it to the area of collaboration software, which helps teams work together better and complete projects.
Work collaboration software, such as Wrike, has grown in popularity as companies have increasingly relied on remote work since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. Wrike’s competitors include Asana Inc., Trello Inc. of Atlassian Inc. i Slack Technologies Inc., which has agreed to be acquired by Salesforce.com Inc. Wrike was founded by Andrew Filev in 2006 and is also endorsed by Bain Capital Ventures i Partners Scale Venture.
Shares of Fort Lauderdale, headquartered in Citrix, Florida, have gained 15% in the past year, giving the company a market value of about $ 16 billion.
Citrix had previously been the subject of a campaign Elliott Management Corp., which first revealed its stake in Citrix in 2015. The investor, who has since left, argued at a time when the company was suffering from execution problems and mismanagement and needed to simplify its business after a wrong purchase. Since then, Citrix has left the GoTo meeting business, replaced two CEOs, revitalized revenue growth, and expanded margins.
Wrike’s investment was made with Vista’s Foundation Fund III, which focuses on software, data, and technology companies for mid-market companies. The fund has deployed $ 2.3 billion of the $ 2.752 billion it has raised, according to data collected by Bloomberg.
– With the assistance of Katie Roof