Francisco Partners Completes $2 Billion Debt Refinancing for Parent Company of SonicWALL and Quest

SAN FRANCISCO & LONDON--Francisco Partners (“FP”) announced that it has completed a $2 billion debt refinancing for Seahawk Holdings, the parent company that holds both SonicWALL and Quest. The refinancing, which comes just one year after FP acquired SonicWALL and Quest, was significantly oversubscribed and allows the parent company to significantly reduce its interest expense. This results in significant cost savings for both SonicWALL and Quest and allows both companies to further invest in growth of new products and services.

“We are thrilled with the performance being driven by the management teams of both SonicWALL and Quest as they both transition to operating as independent companies,” said Dipanjan “DJ” Deb, CEO and co-founder of Francisco Partners. “Completing this refinancing after just one year speaks to the strong execution by both SonicWALL and Quest.”

“The SonicWALL team set ambitious goals for our first year as an independent company. We committed to reinvigorating the brand by driving product innovation and improving service for our customers and partners,” said SonicWALL President and CEO Bill Conner. “Today, we’re proud to say that we’re performing well ahead of expectations.”

SonicWALL’s new product and service launch in September featured the most new products in company history along with the biggest custom-driven update to SonicOS. The new SonicOS 6.5 is already running on more than 15,000 devices worldwide and is supported on close to 30 SonicWall appliances.

“SonicWALL products and services are sold exclusively through the channel, so it is a priority to build and nurture our partner relationships across the globe,” said Brian Decker, Head of Security Investing at Francisco Partners. “The team is very focused on its vision of product innovation, partner tools and customer-focused services.”

As an independent company, Quest is investing in product innovation having delivered over a dozen new cloud offerings in the past year across its solution offerings in identity and access management, tools for the Microsoft ecosystem, database tools, and data protection, backup and endpoint products.

“This first year as an independent company has allowed us to deliver a number of significant next generation cloud-centric products for our customers across all product lines” said Jeff Hawn, Quest CEO. “We are committed to being the trusted partner of our nearly 100,000 customers on their journey to simplify their IT infrastructure.”

David Golob, CIO at Francisco Partners, added "Quest's rejuvenation as an independent company is progressing ahead of schedule. We are listening to customer feedback and the benefits of independence and innovation are becoming evident across the portfolio."

About Francisco Partners

Francisco Partners is a leading global private equity firm, which specializes in investments in technology and technology-enabled services businesses. Since its launch over 17 years ago, Francisco Partners has raised over $14 billion in committed capital and invested in more than 200 technology companies, making it one of the most active and longstanding investors in the technology industry. The firm invests in opportunities where its deep sectoral knowledge and operational expertise can help companies realize their full potential.

About SonicWALL

SonicWALL has been fighting the cyber-criminal industry for over 25 years, defending small, medium-size businesses and enterprises worldwide. Backed by research from SonicWALL Capture Labs, our award-winning real-time breach detection and prevention solutions, coupled with the formidable resources of over 19,000 loyal channel partners around the globe, are the backbone, securing more than a million business and mobile networks and their emails, applications and data.

This combination of products and partners has enabled an automated real-time breach detection and prevention solution tuned to the specific needs of the more than 500,000 organizations in over 150 countries. These businesses can run more effectively and fear less about security. For more information, visit www.sonicwall.com.

About Quest

Quest Software helps customers solve complex technology problems with simple solutions. At Quest, we believe the right technology eliminates the need to choose between efficiency and effectiveness. With Quest solutions, companies of all sizes can reduce the time and money spent on IT administration and security, so you have more time to focus on and invest in business innovation. Quest has more than 100,000 customers worldwide across its portfolio of software solutions spanning information management, data protection, endpoint systems management, identity and access management, and Microsoft platform management. For more information, visit www.quest.com.