Contact: Brenon Daly
There’s money, and then there’s expensive money. To underscore the difference, consider a pair of recent money-raising offerings from notably acquisitive companies. First, the worst. Art Technology Group announced earlier this month that it intended to hold a 25-million-share secondary, with an undisclosed portion of it earmarked for possible acquisitions. The plan didn’t find many fans on Wall Street, who carped about a profitable company adding 25 million additional shares on top of a base of about 135 million.
Art Technology shares promptly went into a tailspin. By the time the e-commerce firm had priced them, investors had clipped 22% off the stock. So instead of raising about $113m, the vendor had to settle for $88m (excluding overallotments). Even though Art Technology had to take a haircut on the secondary, it did at least get it done. With it, the debt-free company more than doubled the amount of cash it has on hand and could be a serious consolidator in the market. Already this year, Art Technology made a rather smart purchase of InstantService, a startup providing customer service through online chat and email.
And, although the reaction wasn’t nearly as severe, Autonomy Corp also took a mild hit from its investors when it announced plans to raise some $785m in a convertible offering last week. Adding those proceeds into its already well-stocked treasury will give Autonomy more than $1bn to go shopping with, although some of that will have to go to pay for its earlier Interwoven acquisition. Over the past three years, Autonomy has picked up five companies for a total of $1.2bn, although Interwoven accounts for two-thirds of the aggregate spending. As to what Autonomy might be looking to buy with its newfound riches, my colleague Nick Patience says in a recent report that he could imagine Autonomy going into marketing automation and BI, and he even has a few names that could well be on Autonomy’s shopping list.