The major shareholder wants to buy up all remaining shares in SUSE to make the company private. As a private company, SUSE needs to get stronger to compete with Red Hat.

SUSE announces in a press release that it is withdrawing from the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. Luxembourg’s main shareholder Marcel, who already owns 78 percent of the shares, will submit a non-binding takeover bid to the remaining shareholders in order to acquire full custody of SUSE. That could cost Marcel a total of 2.6 billion euros, an additional price of 67 percent over the last listed market value of SUSE.

The privatization aims to strengthen SUSE’s position in the open source software market. The most famous product is undoubtedly the Linux distribution that the company releases. However, SUSE’s growth seemed to stagnate, with the company generating just 1 percent more revenue in the first quarter of 2023 compared to 18 percent growth a year earlier.

Compete with Red Hat

SUSE mainly reflects Red Hat. In recent months, a number of high-ranking personalities have been snatched from the competitor, including CEO Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen, but also Chief Revenue Officer Werner Knoblich made the direct change. Van Leeuwen announces that further changes in the organizational structure are imminent.

Its main competitor, Red Hat, has already given SUSE a gift by removing Enterprise Linux from open source. This decision was met with dissatisfaction in the developer landscape. SUSE took the opportunity and is working with Oracle on an alternative to fill the gap left by Red Hat.