Workday shares jump 18% on report Silver Lake is in takeover talks
Workday $WDAY shares jumped 18% Thursday, best day since 2016, after Reuters reported Silver Lake is in talks to buy the HR-software maker. Market value: roughly $43 billion. Talks have run for months with no deal guaranteed, but this would rank among the largest software buyouts
Workday $WDAY shares surged 18% on Thursday, their best single-day performance since 2016, after Reuters reported that private equity firm Silver Lake is in talks to acquire the human-resources and finance software company. Workday currently has a market value of roughly $43 billion. According to Reuters, discussions have been ongoing for several months, and there is no guarantee the talks result in a deal. Silver Lake could bring in additional investors to help finance the transaction. A completed deal would rank among the largest software buyouts in history and would pull one of the more established enterprise-software names out of public markets at a moment when Workday, like peers such as Salesforce and ServiceNow, has faced investor pressure to show faster growth from its AI products. Going private would remove that quarterly scrutiny while the company works through its AI transition.