New Relic may be up for sale, and private equity firms may be interested in acquiring the application performance monitoring (APM) and observability software company, Reuters reported.
New Relic develops observability software that allows corporate IT professionals and MSPs to monitor applications, infrastructure, cloud, mobile and other types of customer experiences.
The company typically competes vs. Cisco AppDynamics, Datadog, Dynatrace and SolarWinds, among other rivals. Datadog, in particular, has been a fast-growth story that successfully extended from cloud-based IT monitoring to cybersecurity use cases.
New Relic Business & Executive Leadership Evolution
New Relic pivoted its sales model and executive leadership in 2021. Bill Staples succeeded founder Lew Cirne as New Relic's CEO in July 2021. At the time, Staples vowed to improve New Relic's partner program and MSP engagement efforts.
Fast forward to July 2022, and New Relic is in talks to hire financial advisers to explore options that would include a sale -- though no deal is certain, Reuters reported.
New Relic, founded in 2008, is based in San Francisco. The company's market capitalization was roughly $3.7 billion before Reuters speculated about the potential company sale. New Relic's stock jumped about 18% when the M&A speculation surface.
Activist investor Jana Partners has a stake in New Relic -- which may also indicate that the software company will explore a potential exit.
New Relic Quarterly Earnings: Coming in August 2022
New Relic is expected to announce Q1 results for fiscal 2023 on August 4. Annual revenue was $786 million in fiscal 2022, up 18% compared to fiscal 2021, the company said in May 2022.
If New Relic is exploring strategic alternatives, it's safe to expect some sort of company statement during that August 4 earnings call. Stay tuned.
