Israeli advertising technology firm ironSource said on Sunday it has agreed to go public through a merger with a blank-check company backed by U.S. private equity firm Thoma Bravo, valuing the business at $11.1 billion. The deal with Thoma Bravo Advantage, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), is expected to provide ironSource up to $2.3 billion in cash proceeds, including an oversubscribed PIPE (private investment in public equity) of $1.3 billion and $1 billion of cash held in the trust account of Thoma Bravo Advantage.
ironSource provides developers a platform to acquire users and display ads within mobile-phone games. The merger values ironSource at considerably more than the $1.56 billion the company was worth in its most recent private funding round in 2019.
Co-founder and Chief Executive Tomer Bar Zeev said ironSource had decided to pursue a traditional initial public offering (IPO) but changed course when a mutual friend asked him to take a call with Thoma Bravo Advantage Chairman Orlando Bravo.“I immediately understood we shared the same views about how to build a company, how to run a company,” Bar Zeev said in an interview.
This is the first SPAC deal for Thoma Bravo, which has around $73 billion in assets under management and focuses on investing in software and technology.
Source: Reuters
Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain and Aishwarya Nair in Bengaluru, and Joshua Franklin in Boston; Editing by Peter Cooney, Diane Craft and Daniel Wallis
