Thales Group signed an agreement with Sonae Investment Management to acquire Maxive Cybersecurity, the holding company that consolidates two of Europe’s leading MSSP cybersecurity companies, S21sec and Excellium Services.
The planned acquisition is an important step forward for Excellium in the highly dynamic market for cybersecurity consulting and managed services, which anticipates growth of approximately 10% between 2020 and 2025.
Thales‘s cybersecurity activities account for 1 billion euros in annual sales. The Group is involved at every level of the cyber value chain, offering solutions ranging from risk assessment to protection of critical infrastructure, supported by comprehensive threat detection and response capabilities.
The Group has developed three families of key products and services: The Cybels platform, a complete platform of cybersecurity services including risk assessment, training and simulation, and cyberattack detection and response; Sovereign products including encryptors and sensors to protect critical information systems and The CypherTrust range of products to meet data protection, cloud security and access control requirements.
Thales employs 10,000 software developers and 5,000 critical IT and cybersecurity engineers, in 60 countries. In 2022, Thales plans to hire 11,000 people worldwide, including 1,000 in cybersecurity.
“Excellium Services’ customers will be benefiting from the additional and complementary capabilities that Thales has already developed within their cybersecurity division…”
Xavier Vincens, Managing Partner of Excellium Services
The planned acquisition of Maxive Cybersecurity will expand the European footprint and market leadership of Excellium Services cybersecurity business. Among the benefits, for Excellium this operation represents the opportunity to continue its history of innovation and leadership in cybersecurity within a global organization fully dedicated to digital and tech innovation, connectivity, big data, artificial intelligence cybersecurity, quantum technologies, and defence.
“We are very excited to initiate this new chapter for Excellium Services within the Thales Group as we believe that this operation will allow to develop our competences, know how, experience and services at a global scale”, says Xavier Vincens, Managing Partner of Excellium Services. “Excellium Services’ customers will be benefiting from the additional and complementary capabilities that Thales has already developed within their cybersecurity division, always focusing on mission critical businesses and public organizations.”
Philippe Keryer, Executive Vice President, Strategy, Research and Technology for Thales commented: “The acquisition of Maxive Cybersecurity consolidates our leadership in cybersecurity in today’s constantly expanding cyber threat landscape. We are delighted to welcome the Maxive Cybersecurity teams on board to further strengthen our global cybersecurity capabilities. Together we will be able to provide solutions that deliver ever higher performance to our customers”.
For Sonae Investment Management this operation represents an important success in the MSSP build-up strategy that was initiated in 2014 with the acquisition of S21sec and more recently in 2018 with a participation in Excellium. “As the majority shareholder of the company we’ve helped Excellium to expand outside Luxembourg its initial market and more than double its yearly revenues, building on its history of innovation and specialization and helping it become one of Europe’s leading MSSP companies”, says Carlos Alberto Silva, Managing Partner at Sonae Investment Management.
“The acquisition of Maxive Cybersecurity by Thales’ is a perfect culmination of Excellium’s journey as a company, adding very relevant value to Thales’ cybersecurity capabilities whist at the same time it will offer Excellium customers long term continuity and enhanced service capabilities across the full portfolio” says Simon Church, CEO Maxive Cybersecurity.
The 546 employees of Maxive Cybersecurity located in Spain, Portugal, Luxembourg and Belgium will be integrated into the 2.000+ cybersecurity organization at Thales, jointly generating estimated revenues of above 1,9 bn Euro and covering more than 60 countries.
The operation is expected to close in the second half of 2022 and is subject to the customary regulatory approvals.
