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MariaDB The company is the subject of another potential acquisition bid, as is the company behind the open source relational database management system (RDBMS) of the same name. Confirmed It had received a tentative offer from a California-based company K1 Investment Management,
K1 quietly revealed On Friday it presented an “unsolicited non-binding indicative offer” for MariaDB, which – as its name suggests – is a non-binding exploratory offer that could change depending on the progress of negotiations in the coming weeks. Is. The offer involves MariaDB purchasing all of MariaDB’s stock at a price of $0.55 per share, which would amount to approximately $37 million based on the company’s February 5 closing valuation, although it has not yet been determined what form this offering will take. Will happen.
This news has come amid major changes and turmoil in the company. Entry of a new CEO battle and a massive downsizing effort, as it took off both its Database-as-a-Service And geospatial business,
Forked
MariaDB emerged As a fork of MySQL 15 years ago, MySQL’s project creators became concerned about its independence in the wake of of a series billion dollar acquisition which effectively led to Oracle Owned MySQL in 2009. To date, MariaDB is considered a “drop-in” replacement for those wanting a fully open source MySQL alternative, and is used by big-name companies to store and manipulate data in their applications.
The commercial entity behind MariaDB raised approximately $230 million in venture funding over the years to develop premium features and services on top of the main project, eventually to be public Through a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) in December 2022. as just about Most SPAC-Based IPOsMariaDB’s flotation has been far from a resounding success, falling from its initial day market capitalization $445 million at the end of 2022 (which itself was well below its previous Series D round values private venture at $672 million) in a perennial decline that has seen it hover just above the $10 million mark since the end of the year.
has been at the root of all this A series of poor earnings reportsWith the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) MariaDB warning in September This was not in compliance with listing rules that stipulate that the average global market capitalization of a company cannot fall below $50 million in any consecutive 30-day trading period.
In the months that followed, MariaDB it got the first An “unsolicited non-binding indicative offer”, this time from existing investor Runa Capital, had tentatively offered $0.56 in cash per share. Three weeks later, Runa said it won’t happen MariaDB would eventually be acquired, but instead a sister company called RP Ventures will be Providing a loan of $26.5 million.
Fast forward to early February this year, MariaDB announced a temporary forbearance agreement with its creditors, meaning they would refrain from exercising any remedies set out in the debt agreement while seeking alternative financing solutions. . this news MariaDB’s stock more than doubled In a matter of days, this is why K1 is making its bid relative to MariaDB’s closing price before any tolerance agreement is announced.
Indeed, K1 says it is offering a 189% premium over MariaDB’s February 5 closing price, which was $0.19 and equivalent to a market cap of approximately $12.9 million. There is no guarantee that K1 will make a formal bid for MariaDB, but unlike Runa Capital, which is a traditional VC, K1 has one. Track record of later stage investments This puts it closer to the private equity sector given its 12-year history. And perhaps more importantly, it already has a few acquisitions to its name, including $319 million purchase In 2022, it also took Australia’s ELMO Software private in an acquisition process.
So in many ways, K1 is probably better suited to handle MariaDB than Runa, even if it ultimately decides against it.
According to Irish, K1 has until March 29, 2024 to either formalize its offer or scrap the plans altogether. acquisition rules MariaDB is subordinated due to the location of one of its headquarters (it has one headquarters in Dublin, Ireland and another in Redwood City, California).
It is also worth noting that in light of the crisis in the commercial MariaDB organization, related MariaDB FoundationResponsible for governance around the open source MariaDB project, Recently signed a major sponsorship deal With Amazon Web Services (AWS), that should go some way toward ensuring that the community-driven MariaDB incarnation is lit up.
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