This transaction is expected to generate significant value creation for Thales’ shareholders in line with the targets communicated in July 2023, when announcing the acquisition. In addition, the profile of Thales’ Digital Identity and Security (DIS) activity will be significantly enhanced with new financial targets by 2027 (2024-2027 organic sales growth of +6 to +7% and 2027 EBIT margin at 16.5%).

Patrice Caine, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Thales, said: “The acquisition of the US company Imperva is an important day for Thales, as it marks a new step in the expansion of our global cyber security capabilities for enterprises and governments around the world. We are very excited to welcome the Imperva teams to Thales. The combination of our entities' values and our joint commitment to a future of trust will create significant synergies, business opportunities and major market innovations. With ever-increasing cyber threats against business and government digital infrastructure, Thales is now uniquely positioned to help customers protect the heart of their digital ecosystem: applications, data and identities.”

Data-centric security

Together, Thales and Imperva will help customers address cyber security challenges that have increased rapidly in frequency, severity, and complexity, with the most comprehensive solutions for the broadest range of application, data security, and identity use cases. These three market segments combined are forecasted to grow significantly in the coming years. According to analysts’ forecast, worldwide end-user spending is projected to total around $20 billion in 2024.

With the addition of Imperva, Thales’ expanded cyber security portfolio now offers a highly complementary combination of solutions to help customers secure applications, data and identities across their entire digital ecosystem.

“As a long-standing partner of both Thales and Imperva, we at Exclusive Networks are delighted with the combination of two companies that we know and value,” said Jesper Trolle, CEO Exclusive Networks. “This acquisition marks a key step in Thales' ambition to become a global leader in cyber security, reinforcing its strength in data security and expanding into the buoyant application security market. With this new combined value proposition, Thales will be uniquely positioned to offer even more innovative and effective solutions to address the growing security and compliance challenges faced by organisations around the world.”

This is Thales’ ninth acquisition in the digital security area over the last nine years, and the second largest in the Group's history after Gemalto, world leader in digital security. After the completed acquisitions of Tesserent, the leading player in cybersecurity in Australia, S21sec & Excellium, two major players in cyber security consulting, integration and managed services in Europe, and Onewelcome, a European leader in Customer Identity and Access Management, the integration of Imperva within Thales will position the Group’s cyber security business as one of the top 5 global leaders in cyber security.

Thales in North America

With around 6,200 employees and €2.4 billion revenues in North America in 2022, and approximately 50% of the free float shares held by U.S. shareholders, Thales already has a strong presence in the region. And, according to the company, the acquisition of Imperva increases Thales’ digital security workforce in North America by almost a third.