By Anirban Sen
(Reuters) -Salesforce is in advanced talks to acquire business software maker Informatica, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday.
A deal could be announced soon, said the source, who asked not to be named because the discussions are confidential.
The price of the deal being discussed is below Informatica’s current stock price of $38.48, the Wall Street Journal said, it first reported talks between Salesforce and Informatica.
Salesforce did not immediately respond to a Reuters’ request for comment on the WSJ report. Permira declined to comment.
Informatica is based out of Redwood city, California, and counts companies ranging like Unilever and Deloitte as customers. It has a market capitalization of about $11.35 billion.
Founded in 1993, Informatica offers subscription-based data management services over the cloud and also helps automate tasks for more than 5,000 active customers.
Informatica was taken private in 2015 for about $5.3 billion by a consortium that included private equity firm Permira Advisers Ltd and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.
Six years after it listed again on the NYSE. Permira and CPPIB currently have a controlling stake of over 75% in Informatica.
In early 2023, Salesforce had become a target for activist investors to push for changes resulting in cost cuts and increased share buybacks. As part of a series of steps taken since activist investors including ValueAct Capital and Elliott Management acquired stakes in Salesforce, the company had disbanded its M&A board committee.
Some activists had also pushed the company to increase growth and margins, buy back more shares, and raised concerns about its acquisitions.
Salesforce acquired workplace messaging app Slack Technologies in 2020 in a $27.7 billion deal, betting on an extended run for remote working.
The San Francisco-based cloud-computing pioneer has historically had a keen interest in deals and investments. Slack was Salesforce’s largest acquisition. It bought data analytics platform Tableau Software in an all-stock deal valued at $15.7 billion in 2019.
(Reporting by Urvi Dugar, Utkarsh Shetti and Mrinmay Dey in Bengaluru; Editing by Stephen Coates)