Gigamon, a network visibility company, today agreed to be acquired by private-equity firm Elliott Management for $1.6 billion. Shares of Gigamon rose nearly 6 percent after hours, following the announcement of the acquisition. Elliot Management launched the buyout offer from Evergreen Coast Capital, one of Elliot’s affiliates, in early September.

The deal is expected to close in Q1 2018, after which Gigamon will become a private company. Elliott will pay $38.50 per share, in cash, for each share of Gigamon. The purchase comes at a premium of 21 percent.

Additionally, Gigamon announced today its Q3 earnings, although it cancelled its earnings call with investors due to the pending acquisition. The earnings showed a total Q3 revenue totaling $79.2 million, down from $82.5 million in Q3 2016.  Non-GAAP net income was $2.2 million.

The company has been struggling for the past few quarters. In its Q2 earnings call, Gigamon reported revenues of $69.1 million, compared to $75.1 million in the previous year. The company remained optimistic that its two product releases — an HC3 platform, and an inline secured socket layer (SSL) encryption and decryption offerings — would return to growth in the end of fiscal year 2017.

Earlier this year, following weak fourth quarter earnings, the company’s CMO stepped down, and the company underwent sales and marketing leadership changes as a result. The company stated that the changes were for some of its largest accounts, including one of the customers that delayed purchases in the Q4 2016, leading to the weakened earnings.

The agreement to be acquired by Elliott Management was unanimously approved by the Gigamon board of directors.

In 2015, Elliott Management was involved in a number of technology sector acquisitions and purchases, including an interest in Dell's preliminary attempts to buy EMC.