Photographer: Jason Alden / Bloomberg
Photographer: Jason Alden / Bloomberg
Citrix Systems Inc. is in advanced negotiations to buy the work management platform company Wrike Inc. for more than $ 2 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.
An agreement for Wrike, owned by the technology-focused acquisition company Vista Equity Partners could be contacted later this week, people said, asking not to be identified because the information was private. It would be the biggest acquisition so far for Citrix.
The deal has not been finalized and negotiations can still fail.
Representatives from Citrix and Wrike did not respond to requests for comment. A Vista representative declined to comment.
A $ 2 billion deal would likely bring a substantial return on Vista’s investment. It would also be the largest acquisition to date for Citrix, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
View acquired a majority stake in Wrike, based 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 them to the area of collaboration software, which helps teams work better together and complete projects.
Collaborative work software, such as Wrike’s, has gained popularity as companies have become increasingly dependent on remote work since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. Wrike’s competitors include Asana Inc., Atlassian Inc.’s Trello Inc. and Slack Technologies Inc., which agreed to be acquired by Salesforce.com Inc. Wrike was founded by Andrew Filev in 2006 and is also supported by Bain Capital Ventures and Scale Venture Partners.
Citrix’s stock in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, rose 15% last year, giving the company a market capitalization of about $ 16 billion.
Citrix had already been the subject of a Elliott Management Corp., which first disclosed 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 poor management and needed to simplify its business after a wrong buying wave. Since then, Citrix has broken up its GoTo meeting business, replaced two executive directors, 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 midsize companies. The fund invested $ 2.3 billion of the $ 2.75 billion it raised, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
– With the help of Katie Roof