Hellman & Friedman takes 7.5% stake in Splunk

Yahoo Finance's Julie Hyman discuss Hellman & Friedman shares and its new venture in Splunk.

Video Transcript

JULIE HYMAN: Splunk, which is a buzzy software company. It's software that are used by companies' information technology and security operations. It recently got a-- recently, very recently-- earlier this week, announced it was getting a new CEO, Gary Steele. And now, a private equity firm, Hellman Friedman, according to the Wall Street Journal, is taking a 7 and 1/2% stake in the company, so yet another, perhaps, activist getting involved.

We've had a lot of these situations, and it feels like they're ratcheting up, Soz.

BRIAN SOZZI: Yeah. Say that name five times fast, Julie-- Splunk, Splunk, Splunk, Splunk, Splunk. Wow, that's not bad. Doing on live TV, pretty good. But nonetheless, look, this might be just a play in terms of looking at it from a private equity perspective on Splunk ultimately getting sold. Keep in mind, three weeks ago it was rumored that Cisco has made an overture to Splunk. Now, Cisco declined to comment Yahoo! Finance on that report, as did Splunk.

But nonetheless, you have a new CEO in here named Gary Steele. He was the founding CEO over at Proofpoint, another software maker. So, theoretically, you have someone here that knows what they're doing, understands the software space. At the end of the day, Julie, who would you want-- do you want anyone else running your company than someone with the last name of Steele? Steele, he's going to turn this company around and start delivering better results, because they haven't delivered the past two years. That's why the old CEO got the boot.

JULIE HYMAN: Is this why-- is this what our criteria is now, I guess?

BRIAN SOZZI: Analysis--

JULIE HYMAN: I don't know.

BRIAN SOZZI: --you can use. Analysis you can trust.