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Highlights
- Private equity firm Hellman & Friedman LLC has a modest stake in Splunk Inc. (SPLK).
- Splunk has announced Gary Steele as its new chief executive officer.
- The SPLK stock gained 4.16% YTD.
Shares of software company Splunk Inc. (SPLK) is drawing investors’ interest after the private equity firm Hellman & Friedman LLC bought a modest stake in the firm.
The SPLK stock was up 4.33% to US$127.10 at 12:08 pm ET on Friday.
The gains follow the purchase of Hellman & Friedman’s 7.5% stake in the software firm.
Wall Street Journal reported that the purchased shares are worth around US$1.4 billion.
Splunk is a leading cybersecurity and full-stack monitoring firm and is currently valued at US$20 billion. The cybersecurity space has been in focus lately due to increased online threats.
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Splunk shares fell sharply after a disappointing quarterly result and then CEO’s departure. Hellman & Friedman began acquiring the Splunk shares In December. Earlier, an offer from Costco Wholesale Corporation (COST) to purchase Splunk did not materialize.
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On March 2, the San Francisco-based technology company announced to appoint Gary Steele as its new chief executive officer and a board member effective from April 11, 2022.
Before joining Splunk, Steele was the founding CEO of Proofpoint. He served the firm for about two decades. He also worked for Portera, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard, and Sybase.
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Financials:
In the fourth quarter and fiscal year ended January 31, 2022, declared on March 2, its quarterly revenue rose 21% YoY to US$901 million and full-year revenue by 20% YoY to US$2.67 billion. The cloud revenue rose 70% YoY to US$944 million.
However, its net loss rose to US$1.34 billion or US$8.29 per share diluted from US$0.907 billion or US$5.68 per share diluted in fiscal 2021.
Its cash and equivalents were US$1.43 billion as of January 31, 2022, compared to US$1.77 billion at the end of January 31, 2021.
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Private equity firm Hellman & Friedman has over US$95 billion in assets under management and has offices in San Francisco, New York, and London. After its 7.5% stake in Splunk, it has become the biggest active stakeholder in the software technology company.
Bottomline
The Splunk (SPLK) stock traded in the price range of US$176.66 to US$105.45 in one year. It closed at US$121.83 on March 3 and gained 4.16% YTD. The stock fell 12.65% in one year.
