According to Bloomberg[1], EQT is planning an IPO for German Linux and enterprise software company SUSE[2]. EQT is a Swedish-based private equity firm with €50 billion in raised capital. SUSE[3] is the leading European Union (EU) Linux distributor.
Over the years, SUSE[4] has changed owners several times. First, it was acquired by Novell in 2004[5]. Then, Attachmate, with some Microsoft funding, bought Novell and SUSE[6] in 2010. This was followed in 2014 when Micro Focus purchased Attachmate[7] and SUSE was spun off as an independent division. Then, EQT purchased SUSE from Micro Focus for $2.5 billion[8] in March 2019.
With an IPO of approximately $6 billion, EQT would do very well for itself in very little time.
SUSE has been very successful under EQT. SUSE's Q3 revenue, reported in September 2020, increased 14% year over year. This came despite the results of the COVID-19 pandemic[9]on the global economy. Cloud ACV (Annual Contract Value) bookings continued to flourish with 81% growth, marking 14 consecutive quarters of year over year cloud ACV increase.
The German Linux power also reported a 35% increase year to date in customer deals worth more than $1 million; a 50% jump in ACV bookings year over year for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES)[10] for SAP Applications[11]; and 25% in US ACV bookings year over year. In short, SUSE is growing and it's been growing fast.
SUSE has also been growing. In July, SUSE agreed to buy Rancher Labs[12] in a major Kubernetes[13] move.
Bloomberg states that the IPO talks are in a very preliminary stage. Nothing