(News Bulletin 247) – The European specialist in securing access and digital identities raised 10.5 million euros, including 5.5 million euros during an express fundraising to finance its external growth strategy.

Investors responded massively to Wallix’s call. The cybersecurity software publisher has just carried out a flash fundraiser overnight from Thursday to Friday to finance its “Unicorn 25” development plan, its roadmap for 2025.

Thus, the company managed to raise 5.5 million euros, an amount slightly higher than the 4 million euros hoped for by Wallix. This operation was carried out in two separate but concurrent parts. The offer reserved for institutional investors was subscribed for approximately 4.4 million euros, while the “ancillary” public offer intended for retail investors by the PrimaryBid platform reached 1.1 million euros.

As with Carmat at the end of 2022, or other innovative companies such as Don’t Nod or more recently Drone Volt, individual investors were able to participate in Wallix’s express fundraising via the PrimaryBid platform in listed by professional investors.

Wallix also indicates that the fundraising was carried out at a price of 10.5 euros per share. thus representing a discount of nearly 16% compared to the prices of the last three trading sessions preceding the setting of the issue price. The action is currently plunging 14.7% to 10.66 euros around 10:50 a.m. after this operation. This fundraising is also associated with the issue of convertible bonds, for an amount of 5 million euros, which will be subscribed by funds managed by NextStage.

Targeted acquisitions

In total, it is therefore an amount of 10.5 million euros which will quench Wallix’s thirst for acquisitions, as part of its external growth strategy of the “Unicorn 25” plan, presented in December 2021.

“We have studied many targets in the French and European cybersecurity ecosystem. We intend to reap the first fruits of this and thus increase our capacities to offer more value to our customers as well as to our ecosystem of strategic partners”, had indicated Wallix when publishing its 2022 results.

The cybersecurity specialist and editor in privileged access management began to put this external growth strategy to music with the acquisition last May of Kleverware, a specialist in access and identity governance. By taking control of this company, Wallix will strengthen its position in the banking and insurance sector.

Wallix does not intend to stop there and intends to target companies with a view to enriching and extending its expertise in certain strategic segments of identity and access management and industrial cybersecurity. The French publisher also hopes with this active acquisition policy to strengthen its client portfolio.

“The cybersecurity market is booming and in perpetual motion and Wallix’s ambition has always been to support companies in their digital transformation. With this capital increase and the bond issue, Wallix is ​​giving itself the means to to accelerate the external growth component of its Unicorn 25 plan to build an ambitious sovereign cybersecurity offer in Europe”, explains its CEO, Jean-Noël de Galzain.

A target of 100 ME turnover in 2025

With the digital transformation and the explosion of access linked to new digital uses, Wallix intends to capitalize on a particularly buoyant market dynamic with a doubling of the privileged access management market by 2025. Moreover, the company has accelerated the pace last year in North America, a strategic region that represents nearly 50% of the global privileged access market.

Wallix recalls having carried out a large part of the investments linked to this strategic plan in 2022, with in particular an enrichment of the offer (launch of Wallix PAM4ALL, OT.security, SaaS Remote Access).

The Unicorn 25 plan will thus allow Wallix to reach a turnover of 100 million euros in 2025, i.e. a fourfold increase in revenues compared to 2022 (25.17 million euros). The company also aims to generate operating profitability of more than 15%.

Achieving these objectives will however be conditional on strong organic growth dynamics, estimated by Wallix at 30% per year on average over the entire plan, which will be supplemented by an external growth component. And that was the whole point of the express fundraising carried out overnight from Thursday to Friday to finance this policy of targeted acquisitions…