The Board of MariaDB said this week it received an unsolicited non-binding indicative proposal from Progress Software to acquire the company via stock purchase.
Progress provides software that enables organizations to develop and deploy their mission-critical applications and experiences, as well as effectively manage data platforms, cloud and IT infrastructure.
The MariaDB board said it is reviewing and taking advice regarding the possible offer.
MariaDB is a new generation database company whose products are used by companies reaching more than a billion users through Linux distributions and have been downloaded over one billion times.
The announcement comes just over a month after a lender threatened to sweep MariaDB accounts over separate take-private bid 14 months after a deSPAC. MariaDB went public in December 2022 via a SPAC merger with Angel Pond Holdings. At that time, the company’s value was estimated at $672 million. A few days after its SPAC deal closed, MariaDB was trading at $4.11.
MariaDB now has a market cap of $30.42 million and last traded at 45 cents.
MariaDB in February confirmed a possible offer of $37.3 million from private equity company K1 Investment Management to take the troubled database vendor into private ownership. The database company said at the time that its board was reviewing the offer and taking advice.
But early publicity around that offer provoked a response from one of the company’s lenders. A Securities and Exchange Commission filing last month reported that RP Ventures, a Nordic early stage investment company that lent MariaDB $26.5 million in October last year, delivered a notice of default to the company. According to the filing, the default arose “as a result of a third party publicly announcing” a non-binding bid for MariaDB of 55 cents per share. Read more.
