Silver Lake, Thoma Bravo Said to Plan Imperva Takeover Bids

(Bloomberg) -- Buyout firms Silver Lake Management and Thoma Bravo are planning to make takeover offers for cybersecurity company Imperva Inc., people familiar with the matter said.

International Business Machines Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc. are also still interested in acquiring the Redwood Shores, California-based company, the people said, asking not to be identified as the matter is private. The next round of bids for Imperva is due next month, they said. Silver Lake may team up with a separate strategic partner to make its offer, two of the people said.

Imperva shares rose as much as 11 percent in New York trading and were up almost 1 percent to $51.87 at 1:43 p.m. in New York, valuing the company at about $1.69 billion.

Activist investor Elliott Management Corp. disclosed in June that it had amassed about 10 percent of Imperva, and was talking with the company’s board about “strategic and operational opportunities.” It raised its stake to 10.9 percent later that month. Imperva hired specialist technology advisory firm Qatalyst Partners in August to carry out a “comprehensive review of strategic alternatives”.

Spokesmen for Cisco, Imperva, IBM and Silver Lake declined to comment. Spokesmen for Thoma Bravo and Qatalyst didn’t respond to e-mail requests for comment.

Imperva, founded in 2002, supplies threat detection, breach prevention and other data-protection products for industries including health care, financial services and for the government. The company has a market value of about $1.7 billion.

--With assistance from Ian King and Jing Cao To contact the reporters on this story: Alex Sherman in New York at asherman6@bloomberg.net, Kiel Porter in New York at kporter17@bloomberg.net, Beth Jinks in San Francisco at bjinks1@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Elizabeth Fournier at efournier5@bloomberg.net, Elizabeth Wollman