Tag: DBTK

What happened to the storage sector’s Class of 2007?

Brenon Daly

Contact: Brenon Daly

Back in mid-2007, BlueArc was one of a quartet of storage vendors that put in their paperwork to go public during those go-go days on the stock market. However, if the NAS systems specialist, which recently re-filed its prospectus, does manage to see through its offering on this go-round, it will find itself very much alone. All three of BlueArc’s would-be fellow public storage contemporaries have been consumed by larger tech companies. The total bill for those three transactions: $4.8bn.

Dell would have had a hat trick for the Class of 2007 storage firms, if not for Hewlett-Packard. As it was, the Round Rock, Texas-based vendor took home EqualLogic in November 2007 before that company could even go public and then erased Compellent Technologies from the NYSE last December. Of course, Dell was lead bidder for 3PAR last summer, too, before losing out to HP. (And those deals are just for the big storage providers that filed their S1s in 2007. If we move back a year to 2006, another two vendors – Double-Take Software and Isilon Systems – that debuted that year were both gobbled up in 2010.)

With all this consolidation, where does that leave BlueArc? As we penciled out in our report on its planned IPO, the company is almost certain to be worth less when it does hit the market than it would have been worth before the Great Recession. Somewhat perversely, that’s true even though BlueArc will be twice the size that it was when it put in its prospectus in 2007.

If the company finds that prospect too demoralizing, it could always follow its fellow filers and opt for a trade sale. We would have put forward Oracle as a possible buyer of BlueArc, in a kind of ‘discount’ play for NetApp. But that seems even less likely since Oracle rolled in Pillar Data Systems on Wednesday morning. So, it looks like either HDS decides that it wants to own its OEM partner outright or BlueArc (finally) hits the market.

Thoma Bravo doubles down on Double-Take

Brenon Daly

Contact: Brenon Daly

Just a week after we noted that the bidding for Double-Take Software had hit the final stretch, with a trio of buyout shops still in the running, one of the private equity firms announced plans Monday to pick up the file-replication software vendor. Thoma Bravo, through its Vision Solutions portfolio company, will pay $242m for Double-Take in a take-private that’s expected to close in the third quarter. Assuming it goes through, the deal will end Double-Take’s three and a half years as a public company.

Frankly, Double-Take’s run as a public company was one that we didn’t really understand. It never cracked $100m in sales, and has basically been trapped at the same revenue level it hit in 2007. In that year, the vendor recorded sales of $83m. Although sales jumped 16% to $96m in 2008, they ticked back down to $83m in 2009 and Double-Take recently guided to expect about $86m in revenue this year. And the small company was competing against the replication offerings from some of the largest storage providers on the planet: EMC with RepliStor, Symantec with Replication Exec and the replication products CA Inc obtained in its XOsoft purchase.

Perhaps it’s not surprising, then, that the $10.50-per-share bid is actually slightly below the price Double-Take fetched when it came public. In its December 2006 IPO, Double-Take priced its shares at $11 each. And although the stock did trade at twice that price in late 2007, it has been below the IPO price since September 2008. In its time as a public company, Double-Take basically matched the performance of the Nasdaq.

At an equity value of $242m, the actual cost of Double-Take is much lower. The profitable, debt-free vendor held $89m in its treasury at the end of the first quarter, meaning Thoma Bravo/Vision Solutions will only have to hand over $153m in cash. That’s just 1.8 times this year’s projected revenue, and about 4 times maintenance revenue.

Sources: a take-private for Double-Take

Brenon Daly1 Comment

Contact: Brenon Daly

The final bidders for Double-Take Software have narrowed to three buyout shops, and a purchase of the file-replication software vendor could be announced within the next two weeks, we have learned. The company said a month ago that an undisclosed bidder had approached it about a possible transaction.

A number of sources have pointed to Vector Capital as the unidentified suitor, adding that the firm is one of the three bidders still in the running. Although we speculated early on that Double-Take’s two main channel partners (Dell and Hewlett-Packard) might be interested, we understand now that there aren’t any strategic bidders currently at the table.

The price couldn’t immediately be learned, but we suspect there won’t be a huge premium for the company, which was trading at $9.36 on Monday afternoon. The reason? Double-Take recently trimmed its sales outlook for 2010, essentially saying it doesn’t expect to grow this year. It recently guided to about $86m in sales for 2010, about 10% lower than it had expected earlier this year. It finished the recession-wracked 2009 with revenue of $83m, down from $96m in 2008.

Even without growth, Double-Take undoubtedly holds some appeal to a private equity (PE) firm. For starters, the company is cheap. It currently sports a market capitalization of just $200m, but nearly half that amount is made of its cash and short-term investments. (The company held $89m in its treasury at the end of the first quarter.)

With an enterprise value of only $111m, Double-Take now garners just 1.3x projected sales. Another way to look at it: even with a decent premium to the company’s current valuation, a buyer could still pick up Double-Take for about 4x maintenance revenue. Small wonder that a few PE shops are still considering a Double-Take takeout.

A Double-Take takeout?

Brenon Daly

Contact: Brenon Daly

Never mind the business, somebody has their eye on Double-Take Software. The file-replication software vendor said Monday that it came up short in its first-quarter performance, continuing the struggles that it saw throughout 2009. Last year, maintenance revenue flat-lined, while license sales dropped by one-quarter. And although the first quarter is starting off a bit underwhelming, Double-Take is still projecting that it will grow this year. However, even if the company hits the high end of its estimate of $95m, sales for 2010 will still fall just short of 2008’s level of $96m.

Apparently, that lackluster performance hasn’t dimmed the company’s appeal. As Double-Take was announcing its Q1 miss, it also said – in an ‘Oh, by the way…’ manner – that it had received an ‘unsolicited, non-binding’ expression of interest from an unnamed suitor. No terms were revealed so it’s hard to know, specifically, what’s on offer to Double-Take shareholders. The company says only that the bid is ‘above recent trading prices.’ Does ‘recent’ mean a bit under $9, where shares have been since early February? Or does ‘recent’ also include the period in January when shares changed hands above $10, before the company warned (for the first time) that the quarter was coming in a bit light? On the report, Double-Take stock jumped 15% to $10.05 in Monday afternoon trading.

As to who might have floated the bid, it strikes us that this looks like a private equity (PE) play. If a strategic buyer wanted Double-Take, we don’t see it approaching the company in such a fast-and-loose way. Besides, there are basically only two companies that would make obvious bidders: Dell and Hewlett-Packard. The two tech giants are Double-Take’s main channel partners, with Dell accounting for a full 17% of the company’s revenue on its own. Also, both vendors could presumably benefit from Double-Take’s large customer base of SMBs, which numbers more than 22,000. Of course, an auction could draw out any interested strategic player, so the potential bidders aren’t necessarily limited to HP and Dell.

But as we say, we think this offer came from a buyout shop. And we can certainly understand Double-Take’s attractiveness to a financial buyer. In short, it’s cheap. Even with the stock’s pop on Monday, the company still only garners a market cap of about $220m. And the net cost is even cheaper, because the debt-free, profitable vendor carries almost $100m in cash on its balance sheet. At an enterprise value of just $120m, Double-Take is valued at less than three times its maintenance stream. That’s a valuation that any number of PE firms probably figure they could make money on.

Just how far has the CDP market fallen?

Brenon Daly

by Brenon Daly, Henry Baltazar

In the days before the big storage vendors turned continuous data protection (CDP) into a feature rather than a stand-alone product, investors in CDP startups could still make decent returns. Both Kashya and Topio raised about $20m in VC backing, and ended up exiting for eight times that amount. Kashya sold to EMC for $153m in cash in May 2006 while Topio, which wisely blended CDP with heterogeneous replication in its offerings, went to NetApp for $160m in cash a half-year later. (Of the two deals, NetApp-Topio has been the underwhelming transaction. NetApp recently shuttered the SnapMirror for Open Systems product line that it picked up with Topio.)

Since those paydays, however, CDP valuations have plummeted. Symantec acquired assets of Revivio for an estimated $20m in November 2006, while Double-Take Software handed over just $8.3m for TimeSpring Software in late 2007. But even those deals seem rich when we consider BakBone Software’s recent reach for CDP startup Asempra Technologies. Under terms of the deal, BakBone is shelling out just $2.1m for Asempra, which had raised $36m from its backers. To add insult to injury, BakBone is paying for the acquisition mostly in equity, with $1.7m of the price tag covered by its illiquid, Pink Sheets-traded paper. We would note that Asempra’s owners are getting 3.8 million shares of BakBone, which typically only trade about 30,000 shares each session.

Select CDP transactions

Date Acquirer Target Price
May 2009 BakBone Software Asempra Technologies $2.1m
December 2007 Double-Take Software TimeSpring Software $8.3m
November 2006 Symantec Revivio $20m*
November 2006 NetApp Topio $160m
May 2006 EMC Kashya $153m
March 2006 Atempo Storactive Not disclosed

Source: The 451 M&A KnowledgeBase *451 Group estimate