Hewlett Packard Enterprise today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Nimble Storage, the San Jose, Calif.-based provider of predictive all-flash and hybrid-flash storage solutions. HPE will pay $12.50 per share in cash, representing a net cash purchase price at closing of $1.0 billion. In addition to the purchase price, HPE will assume or pay out Nimble's unvested equity awards, with a value of approximately $200 million at closing.

Flash storage is a fast-growing market and an increasingly important element of today's hybrid IT environment. The overall flash market was estimated to be approximately $15 billion in 2016 and is expected to be nearly $20 billion by 2020, with the all-flash segment growing at a nearly 17 percent compound annual growth rate. 

Nimble's predictive flash offerings for the entry to midrange segments are complementary to HPE's scalable midrange to high-end 3PAR solutions and affordable MSA products. This deal will enable HPE to deliver a full range of superior flash storage solutions for customers across every segment. 

In addition, HPE plans to incorporate Nimble's InfoSight Predictive Analytics platform across its storage portfolio, which will enable a stronger, simplified support experience for HPE customers. For example, InfoSight automatically detects 90 percent of all issues within a customer's infrastructure, and resolves over 85 percent of them. This dramatically reduces the amount of time and effort a customer's IT team spends on support activities. 

"Nimble Storage's portfolio complements and strengthens our current 3PAR products in the high-growth flash storage market and will help us deliver on our vision of making Hybrid IT simple for our customers," said Meg Whitman, President and CEO, Hewlett Packard Enterprise. "And, this acquisition is exactly aligned with the strategy and capital allocation approach we've laid out. We remain focused on high-growth and higher-margin segments of the market."

Nimble Strengthens and Expands HPE's Flash Storage Portfolio

Nimble was founded in 2007 and has approximately 1,300 employees worldwide. The company delivered revenue of $402 million in its most recent fiscal year, up 25 percent year over year. Nimble's strong application performance in its entry to midrange flash storage solutions is backed by an intelligent, predictive analytics engine that delivers a simplified customer experience. This unique analytics platform goes beyond storage to analyze performance issues across the full data path, from apps to the array, and resolves most issues before they occur. In addition, Nimble has recently introduced multicloud storage services that combine the best of on-premises and public cloud storage capabilities for Hybrid IT deployments.  

Key customer benefits of the combined HPE and Nimble portfolio include:                               

• The ability to seamlessly move data and replicate across hybrid flash and all-flash storage to meet unpredictable IT demands
• Integrated data protection with application aware snapshots, encryption, replication and integration with leading independent software vendors
• Effortless management of storage volumes along with data compaction to reduce capacity costs
• Predictive support automation to anticipate and prevent most problems and solve remaining issues in a matter of minutes
• Quality of service controls and full stack analytics to ensure predictable performance in hybrid IT deployments
• Increased dedicated sales specialist support
• A future-proofed technology platform with a rich roadmap to support next-generation storage

"Customers deploying hybrid IT not only need the performance of flash storage but are looking for predictive intelligence to optimize their infrastructure," said Antonio Neri, Executive Vice President and General Manager of the Enterprise Group, Hewlett Packard Enterprise. "With Nimble Storage and 3PAR, we can now deliver on those storage needs and provide more effective on-premises control and performance, at public cloud economics."

Deal Accelerates Nimble Financial Performance

By bringing together complementary product portfolios and leveraging HPE's expansive go-to-market capability, partner ecosystem, and leading server platform, HPE and Nimble will be able to significantly accelerate the financial performance of the combined business. 

"Over 10,000 enterprises are using Nimble Storage because our Predictive Cloud Platform is reliably fast, radically simple, and cloud ready," said Suresh Vasudevan, CEO at Nimble Storage. "This acquisition validates our technology leadership in flash and in the use of cloud-based predictive analytics.  We're confident that by combining Nimble Storage's technology leadership with HPE's global distribution strength, strong brand, and enterprise relationships, we're creating expansion opportunities for the combined company."

Transaction Details

The deal is expected to be accretive to HPE earnings in the first full fiscal year following the close.

Under the terms of the agreement, a subsidiary of HPE will commence a tender offer to purchase any and all of the outstanding shares of Nimble common stock for $12.50 per share in cash. Nimble stockholders representing approximately 21 percent of Nimble's outstanding shares have entered into a Tender and Support Agreement committing them to tender their shares into the tender offer. The completion of the tender offer is subject to customary terms and closing conditions, including Nimble stockholders tendering a majority of Nimble's outstanding shares in the offer, and receipt of specified regulatory approvals. 

Following the successful completion of the tender offer, the agreement provides that Nimble will merge with a subsidiary of HPE and become a wholly owned subsidiary of HPE, and all remaining outstanding shares of Nimble will receive in the merger the same consideration paid to other stockholders in the tender offer. 

Following the completion of the transaction, Nimble shares will be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange. 

The tender offer and merger and closing of the transaction are expected to be completed in April, subject to the satisfaction or waiver of the offer conditions set forth in the agreement.