Here Come the Software Boomerangs

The market for initial public offerings has thawed a bit so far this year. But don’t forget about deals going the other way—software companies going private again, relatively soon after their IPOs. 

Bankers say they are talking to software companies that have struggled since their IPOs about going private again. Some of these boomerang stocks will be leaving the market for the second time. 

The biggest such take-private so far this year is Turn/River Capital’s $4.4 billion cash acquisition of IT software provider SolarWinds, completed in April. That was SolarWinds’ second public-private go-around: It first went public in 2009, and Thoma Bravo and Silver Lake took it private in 2016. Then, 32 months later, it went public again.