Category: services

‘One HP’? Not any longer

Brenon Daly

Contact: Brenon Daly

In the largest-ever corporate overhaul of a tech company, Hewlett-Packard said Monday that it will split its business in half. The 75-year-old company, which had recently marketed itself under the tagline ‘One HP,’ will separate its broad enterprise IT portfolio from its printer and PC unit within a year. Each of the two stand-alone businesses (Hewlett-Packard Enterprise and HP Inc.) will be roughly the size of rival Dell, booking more than $50bn of sales annually.

Increasing those sales, even under the new structure, will be challenging. In discussing the planned separation, HP executives emphasized that the move comes at the end of a three-year ‘fix and rebuild’ phase at the company. During that time, HP’s top line has shrunk more than 10%. It has already laid off 36,000 employees, and said Monday that the final number of employee cuts may reach as high as 55,000. And HP has virtually unplugged its M&A machine, even as rivals such as IBM and Cisco continue to buy their way into new, faster-growth markets.

Through the first three quarters of its current fiscal year, HP has flatlined. The company indicated that will continue into its next fiscal year, which starts in November. While HP didn’t offer specific growth rate targets or forecasts for the stand-alone companies – once they get on the other side of the hugely disruptive separation – executives noted that the two businesses would be more ‘nimble’ and ‘responsive’ than they would be together.

That may well be, but the two businesses will also be burdened by higher costs individually than they currently face. ‘Dis-synergies’ such as higher supply and distribution costs, as well as supporting two full corporate structures, will shrink cash flow, which has been the key metric for Wall Street’s evaluation of HP’s mature business. Still, HP will throw off several billion dollars of free cash flow.

Some of that cash appears to be earmarked for M&A, although spending there will be a distant afterthought behind dividends and share repurchases. (And HP executives were quick to add that any deals would be ‘return-driven’ and ‘disciplined.’) But even stepping back into the market for acquisitions represents a dramatic shift at HP. After all, it was a series of poor acquisitions – most notably Autonomy but also services giant EDS – that partially forced the prolonged restructuring that culminated in this planned separation.

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Much more to do at Dell

Brenon Daly

Contact: Brenon Daly

After a tortuous, acrimonious and sometimes litigious seven-month process, Dell shareholders today approved the proposed $24.6bn take-private of the IT vendor. Now comes the hard part for the folks behind the third-largest tech leveraged buyout (LBO) in history: actually changing the trajectory at Dell.

We say that because the LBO doesn’t actually change much at the company. For the most part, the LBO is a financial event, rather than a strategic one. As a private company, Dell is simply going to continue plodding along its already planned transformation from ‘box maker’ to (ideally) a strategic supplier of IT products and services.

To be clear, however, this is not a new development at Dell. The handful of priorities that it has highlighted for its life as a private company – such as expanding its enterprise business, pushing further into emerging markets and redoubling its commitment to its sales channel – are all ones that it has put forward to shareholders since at least 2008. Dell would counter that its new ownership structure, with chief executive Michael Dell owning three-quarters of the company, will allow them to move quicker on that strategy.

That may be so, but we might suggest that it skims over the difficulties for any 110,000-employee company (public or private) to transform itself. After all, Dell has been steadily and consciously looking beyond its PC and laptop business for nearly the past half-decade, with limited success. In fiscal 2008, that segment contributed 61% of total Dell revenue, but that portion has only dropped to about 54% now.

And that’s despite spending more on M&A than it ever had in its history. Since 2006, the company has averaged about five acquisitions per year, according to The 451 M&A KnowledgeBase . Altogether, it has spent more than $12bn to get into new markets, including storage (EqualLogic, Compellent), services (Perot Systems), networking (Force10) and security (SonicWALL, SecureWorks). It’s also relevant to note for the soon-to-be-private Dell that shareholders footed the bill for that shopping spree.

Yet even as Dell has added all those new businesses – to say nothing of the collective billions of dollars in revenue from the acquired companies – it has not been able to grow. In fact, as the IT vendor gets set to step off the Nasdaq and go behind closed doors, it is going to be smaller and less profitable than it was before it kicked off its multibillion-dollar M&A program.

For more real-time information on tech M&A, follow us on Twitter @451TechMnA.

Cashing in on CDW

Contact: Tejas Venkatesh, Ben Kolada

Although CDW was taken private at the height of the prerecession bubble, when valuations were on the rise, its private equity (PE) owners, led by Madison Dearborn Partners and including Providence Equity Partners, may still profit handsomely from their investment. Based on our assumptions, the PE pair could record a profit of nearly $4bn on their investment. CDW filed its IPO paperwork last week.

Madison Dearborn announced that it was taking CDW off the Nasdaq in May 2007, at a valuation of about 1x trailing sales. At that time, the company was debt-free and generated $7bn in revenue in the preceding 12 months.

At the time of the take-private, CDW indicated that it expected $4.6bn of debt to be outstanding after the $7.3bn deal. Assuming all of that debt was used to finance the deal would mean that Madison Dearborn and Providence Equity would have invested just $2.7bn in equity.

If CDW reenters the public arena at the same valuation it was taken off (1x sales), then Madison Dearborn and Providence Equity’s investment will more than double. If CDW goes public at an enterprise value of $10.1bn (1x sales), backing out its $3.7bn of net debt would mean that the PE shops’ equity would have grown from $2.7bn at the time of the take-private to $6.4bn today.

For more real-time information on tech M&A, follow us on Twitter @451TechMnA.

Go Daddy the trendsetter

Ben Kolada

Contact: Ben Kolada

Shortly after acquiring accounting startup Outright Inc, GoDaddy.com announced that it has picked up mobile website creation startup M.dot for an undisclosed amount. With these two deals, the domain name registration and Web hosting giant is becoming a bit of a trendsetter in its M&A strategy. We’ve been predicting a trend of mass-market hosting providers moving beyond providing simply Web hosting to offering more services for their small business customers.

M.dot provides a smartphone application that enables iPhone users to design and develop mobile websites without any coding. The company, less than a year old, had raised $700,000 in funding from Archimedes Labs, FLOODGATE Fund, SV Angel and angel investors. The deal makes sense since more and more people are more often accessing mobile, rather than fixed, websites.

With M.dot, Go Daddy further reinforces its desire to become a service provider, rather just another website hoster. Usually a pair of acquisitions of small startups wouldn’t merit much attention, but Go Daddy’s dealmaking sets the stage for a trend we expect to see more of – mass-market hosting companies buying their way into services. We’re working on a longer report on this trend that will be published soon.

For more real-time information on tech M&A, follow us on Twitter @MAKnowledgebase.

A deal-maker departs Dell

Brenon Daly

Contact: Brenon Daly

The top dealmaker at Dell, David Johnson, has left the computer maker for buyout shop Blackstone Group. Johnson joined Dell in mid-2009 as SVP for Corporate Strategy after an acrimonious split from IBM, where he had worked for 27 years. In mid-2010, Johnson was also named head of Business Development, overseeing acquisitions and investments at the company that has been trying to expand beyond simply being a ‘box seller.’

Johnson’s arrival at Dell came at a time when the company, which was a late-comer to the tech market consolidation, had just started shopping. In his time at the Round Rock, Texas-based giant, Dell announced some 20 transactions with a tab of $10bn. The acquisitions got Dell into virtually every part of the tech landscape, including IT services (Perot Systems), security (SecureWorks, SonicWALL), networking (Force10 Networks), storage (Compellent, AppAssure) and infrastructure software (Quest Software).

However, the return on that spending has yet to show up. Dell is still shrinking. It will likely end fiscal 2013, which wraps at the end of this month, with sales of about $57bn. That’s some $5bn, or 8%, lower than the company’s revenue in its previous fiscal year. Again, that decline comes despite a not-insignificant addition of aggregate revenue from its M&A spree. (For instance, Quest, which Dell closed in late September, was generating almost $900m in annual sales when it was acquired.)

The lack of growth at Dell is the reason the stock is out of favor on Wall Street. Since mid-2009, when Johnson joined Dell, the company has lost almost 20% of its value while the Nasdaq has tacked on 75%. The market values Dell at slightly less than $20bn.

For more real-time information on tech M&A, follow us on Twitter @MAKnowledgebase.

SEOmoz’s acquisition announcement gets listed

Ben Kolada1 Comment

Contact: Ben Kolada

Search engine optimization (SEO) specialist SEOmoz could also be considered a public relations expert. Rather than issuing a staid press release that follows the typical format, the company announced its acquisition of GetListed on Tuesday in rare form that included both style and substance. Having one characteristic without the other can cause a release to be a flop, but when combined together the impact can be profound.

Privately held SEOmoz announced on Tuesday the $3m cash and stock acquisition of GetListed, also privately held, using both a more formal press release and a ‘ransom note’ format.

The strategic rationale for the deal makes sense. The purchase of GetListed provides SEOmoz with software tools that SMBs use to analyze and utilize free local marketing outlets, such as Google Places. The deal adds a local component to SEOmoz’s otherwise geo-agnostic software.

But the substance of the announcement arguably carried more weight than the rationale of the fairly small transaction. Privately held companies are not required to disclose sensitive details of acquisitions, such as price, and very few choose to do so.

In providing both substance (the price of the transaction) and style (the ransom note format), SEOmoz was able to generate considerable media coverage. For example, a quick Google search for ‘seomoz’ and ‘getlisted’ generated more than three times as many results as a search for ‘urban airship’ and ‘tello’ – a pairing that was announced the same day.

Though perhaps a stretch, after seeing the success of its own public relations model, we wonder if SEOmoz may want to offer public relations capabilities to its customers. If it decides to go this route, one likely target would be young startup AirPR, which provides a platform for companies to find public relations professionals.

For more real-time information on tech M&A, follow us on Twitter @MAKnowledgebase.

Priceline gets KAYAK for a good price

Ben Kolada

Contact: Ben Kolada, Brenon Daly

For a price comparison website, KAYAK.com appears to be settling for a relatively low price in its purchase by online travel giant Priceline.com. At first glance, Priceline’s offer for KAYAK appears respectable. The $40-per-share bid is the highest KAYAK’s shares have seen in its short life on the Nasdaq. Using an enterprise value of $1.65bn, KAYAK is being valued at 5.8 times trailing revenue and about 5.6x full-year 2012 revenue.

But as we look closer, we see that KAYAK is being valued only slightly higher than Priceline’s current trading valuation, and that’s excluding any takeout premium for the acquirer. With an enterprise value of roughly $28bn, Priceline trades at about 5.5x trailing revenue and 5.3x 2012 revenue. (Priceline shares, which have tacked on roughly 15% so far this year, were unchanged on the news of its largest-ever acquisition.)

Valuation – especially for the acquirer – is a key concern in this transaction because unlike most tech deals, Priceline is covering almost three-quarters of the cost of its purchase with equity. Under terms, Priceline will hand over $1.3bn in stock and $500m in cash for KAYAK. As mentioned, paying with paper is relatively rare these days, because cash is king when it comes to M&A. In fact, according to The 451 M&A KnowledgeBase, Priceline’s acquisition of KAYAK is one of only 12 deals done by US public acquirers so far this year where stock has accounted for more than half the total consideration.

Despite faster growth, KAYAK’s valuation is only slightly above Priceline’s

Company EV EV/2012 projected revenue 2012/2011 revenue growth
Priceline $28.03bn* 5.3 21%
KAYAK $1.65bn 5.6 31%

Source: The 451 M&A KnowledgeBase, 451 Research estimates. *Calculated as of 11/8/12.

For more real-time information on tech M&A, follow us on Twitter @MAKnowledgebase.

Is Sucuri for sale?

Ben Kolada

Contact: Ben Kolada

Just a month after its newfound partner VirusTotal was scooped up by Google, antimalware detection and remediation startup Sucuri may be next on the auction block. Word has it that the two-year-old company is attracting takeover attention. That shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise, given the growth potential of the website antimalware monitoring market and the strategic importance companies are placing these days on their online presences.

Sucuri provides a website malware detection product and associated remediation service meant to prevent customers’ websites from being blacklisted by search engines, namely Google. The company’s software scans websites for malware infection and alerts the customer. Sucuri then provides a cleanup service to remove the malware. As businesses continue to transition from brick-and-mortar to e-commerce models, such services will become increasingly important to growing sales, especially during the upcoming holiday season. Given its short lifespan, we suspect that the company is currently generating less than $10m in revenue.

No word yet on which companies may be looking to acquire Sucuri, but the list likely includes mass-market hosting vendors and large security firms. Like its competitors, Sucuri’s go-to-market strategy so far has been partnering with hosting companies, though it also sells directly to customers. The company lists Web host ClickHOST as a partner, as well as a half-dozen WordPress hosting and site design vendors. As for possible security suitors, the most likely acquirers that immediately come to mind are Proofpoint, Kaspersky Lab, Websense, Symantec, AVG Technologies or AVAST Software.

For more real-time information on tech M&A, follow us on Twitter @MAKnowledgebase.

A solid IPO for Trulia

Contact: Thejeswi Venkatesh

Amid the consumer tech IPO lull following the Facebook offering, real estate website Trulia enjoyed a solid opening on its first day as a public company. First, it priced a dollar above its indicated range, at $17 per share. Then, encouraged by its robust growth, investors bid up the stock further to $23 per share.

Trulia provides an online marketplace, delivered through the Web and mobile applications, that lets consumers and real estate professional connect with each other. Unlike traditional real estate websites like REALTOR.com, Trulia gives users detailed information on crime, commute and schools.

On the top line, the company has put up astonishing growth. In the 12 months ended in June, Trulia generated $51m in revenue, up from $38m in calendar year 2011. It makes money from a combination of advertising on its website and a freemium model for real estate professionals, with the latter accounting for more than two-thirds of its revenue.

The offering valued Trulia’s equity at $448m, or 8.8 times trailing sales, and the company currently garners a market cap of roughly $600m, or 12x trailing sales. That’s good value creation for Trulia, which has raised roughly $33m in venture capital from Accel Partners, Fayez Sarofim and Sequoia Capital. In addition to high growth, public investors were also surely encouraged by the broader housing recovery in recent months.

That’s not to say that Trulia couldn’t have done better. In recent weeks, its primary rival Zillow has traded close to 14x sales. In part, that can be explained by Zillow’s bigger size and outpaced growth. In the 12 months ended in June, Zillow doubled its sales, reaching $90m. But last week, Zillow filed a lawsuit against Trulia, alleging that the company infringed upon a home valuation patent. Trulia denies the allegations. While the eventual outcome is not yet known, investors likely factored that into the stock price.

LifeLock plans life as public company

Brenon Daly

Contact: Brenon Daly

Despite consumer technology names falling largely out of favor on Wall Street, LifeLock has announced plans for a $175m IPO. The identity theft prevention vendor, which has 2.3 million customers, ran at basically breakeven on sales of $125m in the first half of 2012. The offering is being led by Goldman Sachs & Co, which owns 11% of LifeLock, along with Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank Securities.

LifeLock’s filing comes as other consumer-focused technology IPOs have had a rough go of it. That’s true across a number of markets, from social networking (Facebook) to gaming (Zynga) to online backup (Carbonite has been nearly cut in half during its first year on the public market) to information security (AVAST Software pulled its IPO paperwork last month). Fairly or not, LifeLock – a company that spends about half its revenue on sales and marketing – will have to work its way through that bearish sentiment in the market.

Still, the company has been steadily increasing its subscriber base (at about a 20% rate) as well as bumping up its average revenue per subscriber (currently $9 per month). That has helped LifeLock get to a point where it generated $21m of free cash flow in the first half of 2012, which is only slightly less than it generated in all of last year. Also, we recently noted that LifeLock used some of that cash to take its first step into the enterprise market, acquiring ID Analytics. Although that business is still less than 10% of total revenue, it’s a welcome hedge for LifeLock, both in terms of technology and end markets.

For more real-time information on tech M&A, follow us on Twitter @MAKnowledgebase.