French technology firm Thales has completed the acquisition of Imperva, a U.S.-based cybersecurity company, in a $3.6 billion deal. This acquisition, announced on July 25 and finalised earlier than the initially projected timeline of early 2024, marks a significant expansion of Thales’ cybersecurity capabilities globally.
According to senior executives, this acquisition marks a significant milestone in Thales’ expansion strategy, positioning it as a global cybersecurity leader with a presence across 68 countries, a team of over 5,800 cybersecurity experts, and an anticipated €2.4 billion in cybersecurity revenue by 2024, including civil and defense activities.
The company said that this move is expected to result in double-digit growth thereafter and aligns with Thales’ communicated financial targets, projecting a 6 to 7% organic sales growth and a 16.5% EBIT margin by 2027.
“The acquisition of the US company Imperva is an important day for Thales, as it marks a new step in the expansion of our global cybersecurity capabilities for enterprises and governments around the world,” said Patrice Caine, Chairman and CEO of Thales.
The combined expertise of Thales and Imperva is expected to provide comprehensive solutions addressing the rapidly growing challenges in cybersecurity, with a focus on application, data security, and identity use cases.
These market segments are forecasted to experience significant growth, with worldwide end-user spending estimated to reach around $20 billion in 2024.
Thales’ expanded cybersecurity portfolio, enriched by Imperva’s offerings, includes unified application security, data security solutions for sensitive data protection and control, and identity and access management platforms ensuring secure access to applications and digital services.
Jesper Trolle, CEO, Exclusive Networks, a partner of both Thales and Imperva, said “This acquisition marks a key step in Thales’ ambition to become a global leader in cybersecurity, reinforcing its strength in data security and expanding into the buoyant application security market.”
This acquisition is Thales’ ninth in the digital security domain over the past nine years and stands as the second largest in the Group’s history, following the acquisition of Gemalto. It follows Thales’ strategic acquisitions in the cybersecurity sector, including Tesserent in Australia, S21sec & Excellium in Europe, and OneWelcome in Europe.
The integration of Imperva positions Thales as one of the top 5 global leaders in cybersecurity.
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Like all other markets, the acquisition is particularly impactful in India, where it will introduce approximately 100 employees specialising in software engineering development and customer success management, based in Bengaluru and Mumbai, starting in January, said the company.
Thales said it is R&D driven organisation with an annual investment of €4 billion in R&D, with €1 billion being self-financed. The company holds 20,000 patents, with more than half involving key technologies like AI, generative AI, cybersecurity, big data, the cloud, augmented reality, and quantum technologies.
