SUSE

About SUSE
SUSE’s offering is grouped into two open source software product categories – the SUSE Linux Enterprise product family, which comprises its core Linux operating system offering, and the SUSE Rancher product family, which includes its container management and storage offering. Taken together, these are the key pillars of every modern enterprise’s digital transformation strategy. SUSE also has a differentiated Edge offering, consisting of a comprehensive platform of purpose-built Linux and Kubernetes technologies that enable its customers to build, deploy, run, and manage Edge workloads.

SUSE’s more than 1,900 employees develop and deliver innovative solutions to its blue-chip customer base from a broad network of hubs in Europe, the United States, South America and Asia. SUSE leverages its globally scaled, multi-channel go-to-market platform to sell its solutions both directly as well as through indirect channels such as Value-Added Resellers, Cloud and Managed Service Providers, and Independent Hardware Vendors.

SUSE has an exceptional financial profile characterized by fast growing, recurring revenue at scale, combined with very high profitability and cash generation. In FY2020, SUSE recorded 17 percent growth in revenue year-on-year, with 98 percent of revenue derived from recurring subscription revenue.

Market trends & drivers
SUSE operates within several attractive markets that benefit from global megatrends like big data, rising cloud adoption and the growing popularity of IoT / Edge, which are leading to many enterprises accelerating their digital transformation and fundamentally changing their IT infrastructure. Growing adoption of open source technologies and the digitalization of workloads are driving exponential growth in workloads and data, which is also driving the move of existing and new workloads to hybrid and multi-cloud architectures. At the same time, the massive growth of the IoT market, which requires Edge computing, is also driving demand for Linux and containers.

SUSE is well-positioned within these vast and rapidly growing markets. Its total addressable market comprised of Linux enterprise operating systems, container management and storage, and Edge is expected to grow at a CAGR of 17 percent between 2020 and 2024, reaching approximately USD 34 billion by 2024. Moreover, the serviceable addressable market is expected to grow even faster than the total addressable market, with an annual growth rate of 24 percent between 2020 and 2024.

Investment potential
Since the acquisition in 2018, EQT and SUSE have laid the foundations for rapid growth acceleration, starting with the reinforcement of the Company management team. It also invested heavily in its marketing function and fundamentally upgraded its go-to-market strategy, creating a globally scaled, multi-channel platform.

SUSE’s acquisition of Rancher in December 2020 has further accelerated growth, propelling SUSE into a leadership position in the highly dynamic container management platform space. This is a prime example of SUSE’s unique opportunity to leverage its globally scaled platform for acquisitions, supported by EQT.