N-able Sale to Barracuda Possibly Pending

At the start of the year, N-able CEO John Pagliuca said he wanted to make 2024 a year of transformation.

“We’re looking to transform the company – and if we do it right, the industry – on a couple of different pillars,” Pagliuca said in January.

As it turns out, one of those pillars may go beyond its remote monitoring and management (RMM) and security platforms and its “Ecoverse” open ecosystem strategy. It could involve transforming control of the entire company through an N-able sale. According to Reuters, N-able is looking to sell itself. Cybersecurity vendor Barracuda Networks −owned by investment firm KRR − is among those interested in Burlington, Massachusetts-based N-able, according to Reuters.

N-able Sale Potential Pleases Investors

N-able’s stock price rose by 9.6% at one point after the report. William Blair financial analyst Jason Ader wrote that the stock could hit more than $15 a share. N-able was trading at $13.56 midday Thursday.

"In our view, a deal with Barracuda/KRR would make strategic sense, given the backdrop of consolidating MSP software market and the complementary nature of N-able's products with Barracuda," Ader wrote in a note Wednesday.

Canalys principal analyst Robin Ody said N-able would make a valuable acquisition target, but the impact may be felt in the RMM market. (Canalys and Channel Futures are both part of Informa Tech.)

Canalys' Robin Ody

“It’s a valuable company with good products,” Ody said of N-able. “I can see why it would be an attractive acquisition. It would be a shame if it were to sell now, given it is one of the few RMM companies that has a broad enough portfolio and it had begun an interesting discussion around its 'Ecoverse' strategy. But perhaps its investors want money back and they are forcing the sale.”

The possible N-able sale news came weeks after N-Able reported first-quarter revenue of $113.7 million, up 14% year-over-year.

“We believe this shows that our product strategy is hitting the mark,” Pagliuca said on the earnings call.

At its Empower conference in March, N-able added integrations with Rewst and HaloPSA to its Ecoverse vision.

According to Pagliuca, “the Ecoverse aims to make every single action in the IT technical workflow available via trusted APIs. This will help tame the inefficiency of tool sprawl for MSPs, driving more efficient use of both the N-able tech stack and their other software solutions.”

“Now the line between monitoring and security is effectively gone for the MSP,” he added on the earnings call. “What's an enticing package is we're walking in the door and saying, ‘Hey, we have this powerful world-class EDR technology coupled with the RMM that's integrated.' We are getting that one-two punch of monitoring and security right out of the gate.”

And that one-two punch may soon be under new ownership.