by Private-equity firm Thoma Bravo LP has struck a deal to buy property-management-software provider
RealPage Inc.
RP -0.92%
for $9.6 billion, in one of the largest recent leveraged buyouts.Thoma Bravo is paying $88.75 per share for the company, a 31% premium to RealPages closing price Friday of $67.83, officials at the firms said.RealPage, based in Richardson, Texas, provides a technology platform used by owners and managers of rental properties. Tenants might pay their rent or submit a maintenance request using RealPages software. The company also keeps a database of real-time lease transactions, allowing it to forecast where markets are heading.
Its shares are up 26% this year.
We were able to do quite well during the pandemic because there was a rush by our industry to go virtual, and we were one of the platforms that did that, RealPage Chief Executive
Steve Winn
said in an interview.
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Mr. Winn previously ran Computer Language Research Inc., a maker of tax software, which he sold to what is now
Thomson Reuters Corp.
in 1998. He bought back a unit of the company that focused on real-estate software and built it into what is now RealPage. The company has grown both organically and through a flurry of acquisitions, completing 12 deals in the past three years.
Software has been among the most resilient sectors during the Covid-19 pandemic as businesses demonstrate that they will keep paying for it even as they cut other costs. That has allowed Thoma Bravo, a technology specialist, to be among the years most active private-equity deal makers. RealPage would be its biggest acquisition to date.
The price tag makes it a relatively rare leveraged buyout nearly reaching into the double-digit billions of dollars. While such deals were commonplace before the 2008-09 financial crisis, they have become rarer, with buyout firms more cautious even as they sit on a mountain of unspent cash.
Thoma Bravo, based in San Francisco and Chicago and led by managing partner
Orlando Bravo,
manages more than $70 billion in assets. That includes $22.8 billion it finished raising in October for three separate vehicles.
The private-equity firm sold Ellie Mae Inc. in September to New York Stock Exchange owner
Intercontinental Exchange Inc.
Thoma Bravo, which bought the mortgage-software firm for $3.75 billion last year, made four times its money.
Write to Miriam Gottfried at Miriam.Gottfried@wsj.com and Cara Lombardo at cara.lombardo@wsj.com
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