EQT Eyes $6 Billion Sale of SUSE (reuters.com) 31
Private equity firm EQT AB is reportedly exploring a sale of SUSE that could value the open-source Linux pioneer at up to $6 billion, roughly doubling the valuation since EQT took the company private in 2023. Reuters reports: EQT "has hired investment bank Arma Partners to sound out a group of private equity investors for a possible sale of the company, said the sources, who requested anonymity to discuss confidential matters. The deliberations are at "an early stage and there is no certainty that EQT will proceed with "a transaction, the sources said. [...] The potential deal comes amid a broader selloff in software stocks, which has disrupted mergers and acquisitions activity. Investors are "concerned that new artificial intelligence tools could displace many existing software products, weighing on technology "valuations and making deals harder to price.
Some investors, however, see Luxembourg-headquartered SUSE as a potential beneficiary of AI adoption, arguing that demand for enterprise-grade infrastructure software is likely to grow as companies build and deploy more AI applications. The company generates about $800 million in revenue and more than $250 million in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) and could fetch between $4 billion and $6 billion in a sale, the sources said.
Some investors, however, see Luxembourg-headquartered SUSE as a potential beneficiary of AI adoption, arguing that demand for enterprise-grade infrastructure software is likely to grow as companies build and deploy more AI applications. The company generates about $800 million in revenue and more than $250 million in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) and could fetch between $4 billion and $6 billion in a sale, the sources said.
SUSE has been a great partner (Score:2)
But I wonder if there's really room for multiple professional support options for Linux in the enterprise. We've got IBM, Oracle, SUSE, Canonical, and a few others.
Which is your favorite?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
There has been a push for EU 'tech sovereignty' on various fronts, and I could see SUSE benefiting from that. Currently I haven't seen a SUSE push in that, mainly because nvidia has pushed Ubuntu hard.
Re: (Score:2)
You are saying exactly what I have been thinking for some time. If the EU is looking for their own distribution free from outside influences, SUSE would be a perfect fit in my opinion.
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I don't particularly want to see is a government of any sort - American, Chinese, or European - sticking their fingers into the Linux pie and stating "this is our distribution". Regardless, it's hard to see how them doing so would amount to anything more than performative theater.
Re: (Score:2)
Governments are already dictating features and code in Linux. Just like California is trying with "Age Gating" in Linux. Which with source code some bright 8 year old will defeat for themselves and all their friends.
The EU needs to keep SUSE... (Score:3, Insightful)
Because SUSE is European, it really needs to be kept going as a viable distribution on an enterprise level. Otherwise, sovereignty is at risk. Ideally, some multi-national NGO can be made to handle SUSE patching, as well as OS design for future specifics. On one hand, this needs to be open that people can find bugs and patch quickly. On the other hand, it needs to be very much focused, so it doesn't languish in committee. For example, RHEL is moving towards an immutable Linux model, and it might be wis
Re: (Score:2)
> There has been a push for EU 'tech sovereignty' on various fronts, and I could see SUSE benefiting from that.
The urgency is mostly in moving away from American tech. Because we are currently being lead by a team of lunatics and can no longer be relied upon to do the right thing. However, Ubuntu Linux, owner of the current leading Linux distro is not American. It is based in the UK.
Re: Keep Pushing!!! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
What big European player wants to put $6B on the table though? SAP is the biggest European software company I can name and that doesn't seem like a strategic fit to me.
Re: SUSE has been a great partner (Score:3, Insightful)
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SAP could buy SUSE and use it to create a complete stack, perhaps with HANA.
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EQT already tried to sell SUSE to SAP in late 2020-early 2021 but SAP deemed it too expensive at exactly the same price: $6B (I can't remember exactly but I'd say it was 6B EUR, which is more like $7B today). Then EQT tried to sell it to others and failed too. Finally, SUSE went to the stock market and failed spectacularly, losing 70% value (from 30 EUR to 8 EUR) in a couple of years.
SUSE will be sold but I don't think the $6B figure is right.
Re: (Score:2)
Each has a different take. RHEL is popular, but Ubuntu has been taking a lead over it since Ubuntu is very popular and tends to have newer tools to build on, while RHEL tends to be enterprise focused and fixes backported to it. Oracle Linux is a downstream of RHEL, and it works just as well as RHEL, but there is a lot of apprehension about Oracle Linux. It would (IMHO) be nice if Oracle ported official ZFS (TM) to Oracle Linux and supported it, or just adopted OpenZFS as the flagship standard.
SUSE is a s
Re: (Score:2)
The Oracle business model is to trap customers on platforms they control in exchange for ongoing fees.
Where is SUSE used? (Score:2)
Revenue of $800M can't be all wrong, but if you sum up all the times I've installed OSs, SUSE is somewhere down there with various BSDs.
Is it regional? "Zappa is God in Hungary / Czechoslovakia", sorta?
Re:Where is SUSE used? (Score:4, Interesting)
You would be surprised where SUSE is used. It is used as an enterprise operating system in a lot of companies. It works well, and even though it is a RPM based OS, it is not a RHEL downstream.
It is used everywhere, a lot in the US, and has a lot of management capability. It also has a SMIT-like management tool.
How it started (Score:1)
Some affiliated people were talking about ditching the "four freedoms" and "cutting out" the "rot" of "fascists" from their licenses.
Last I heard they couldn't get anybody to volunteer to stand for a board seat on the OpenSuSE Foundation, so no elections. Has that changed?
I knew some local businesses that loved working with SuSE on HPC int
Re: How it started (Score:2)
SCO or SUSE? (Score:2)
Who remembers with fondness the McBride times? Ah the shit show that was.
Re: SCO or SUSE? (Score:2)
Need to refresh their distro... (Score:2)
It's gotten really hard for SUSE shops to be happy with running what is now an 8-year old base. Yes they update some things and deprecate things, but a lot of the bones are same as 2018 release, whereas before they refreshed every 4-5 years.
20x earnings? (Score:2)
SUSE (Score:2)
To whom do they want to sell SUSE. And why is the Bavarian company suddenly headquartered in Luxembourg?