BEA Systems said Thursday that it's willing to sit at the negotiating table with any potential buyers--if they're open to a price of $21 a share to start acquisition talks.
The announcement comes as the enterprise software maker is feeling pressure to enter merger talks with Oracle, which earlier this week gave BEA a Sunday deadline for its current buyout proposal. Oracle is offering $17 a share, or $6.7 billion, in cash for BEA.
"We continue to believe that Oracle's unsolicited proposal to acquire BEA at $17 per share significantly undervalues BEA, and is therefore not in the best interests of BEA shareholders. Accordingly, we will continue to vigorously oppose a sale to Oracle at $17 per share," BEA stated in a release.
But the middleware maker noted: "Over the last several weeks, Oracle has repeatedly asked us for the price at which we would be willing to begin negotiations, and the (BEA) board has concluded, after consultation with its financial adviser Goldman Sachs, that it is prepared to authorize negotiations with third parties, including Oracle, at a price of $21 per share."
That would push Oracle's offer up by nearly 24 percent, making the deal worth $8.3 billion.
"What I find encouraging about BEA's announcement is it shows some willingness on (BEA's part) to sell itself," said Brendan Barnicle, an analyst at Pacific Crest Securities. "Maybe they'll ultimately meet in the middle, somewhere at $19 a share."
"Oracle could pay $21 a share, and it still would be (additive to its earnings). But based on Oracle's previous comments, they don't want to spend more than $17 a share, which is what you'd expect them to say," Barnicle said.
Prior to its announcement, BEA had been informally indicating to Wall Street that BEA's value should be viewed on par with the price SAP said it would pay for Business Objects.
"Business Objects, however, has had greater license growth than BEA, but you could argue that's because Business Objects sells applications and BEA is a platform play," Barnicle noted.
One analyst, Charles Di Bona of Sanford Bernstein, meanwhile, views BEA's demand of $21 a share too rich to justify, even for Oracle.
"I even have trouble with $17 a share. It's going to be difficult to make $17 (additive to earnings), unless you make a lot of adjustments," Di Bona said.
BEA stated that it is also requiring interested parties to provide a high degree of assurance that a deal would ultimately be sealed, as it seeks to avoid disruption to its business.
"The real question is whether BEA's announcement will shake another buyer out of the tree. I'm not convinced there is another player in the branches," Di Bona said. "If someone doesn't fall out of the branches, it'll take the competitive pressure off Oracle, and there'll be a lot of playing room."
One industry titan that is not expected to fall from the tree is SAP. Company CEO Henning Kagermann, in addition to a source familiar with the thinking of the supervisory board, said SAP is not interested in BEA.
Sorry, but BEA shot itself in the foot. The offer from Oracle was more than fair. While I understand that BEA was undervalued, was it worth more than $17 a share? No way. This deal is a week old, if any 3rd buyers were gonna make a move they probably would have done it by now. While it's possible that Oracle and BEA are using some of their shared backchannels for negotiations ( <a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.newsvisual.com/newsvisual/2007/10/oracle-and-bea.html" target="_newWindow">http://www.newsvisual.com/newsvisual/2007/10/oracle-and-bea.html</a> ) I doubt Oracle is going to raise their bid. Although never say never as Oracle did raise it's bid for PeopleSoft.
Finally an analyst (Di Bona) who's smart enough to give this deal a reality check. These other analysts pontificating that ORCL will meet BEA's absurd offer, or even "half-way" are somewhat clueless as the evidenced presented by the market.
Bottom line, if BEA had another offer or is truly "negotiating in the wings," I'd think such info would either be leaked or presented to the market or to ORCL. Instead, all we've read is puffery & the market isn't buying it.
Bottom line, BEA has no other offer, & is likely not talking to anyone with a real interest in acquiring BEA that is willing to take on ORCL. If such were the case, such "news" would have been made available to the market. It hasn't b/c none exists.
The company didn't try hard enough to stop a 10-year incursion by hackers likely working from China, says a former Nortel exec cited by the Wall Street Journal.
Google creates an animated doodle that features a boy, a girl, Google's search engine, and a jump rope. But might there be darker, more analytical, more troubling interpretations to this tale?
When the sun goes down, that's when the iPad gets busy for folks with news readers. The iPhone? It's more of a daytime habit. If you're building an app for both devices, heed the lesson.
EnerG2 opens a plant to make an engineered carbon that will improve performance of energy storage devices and make storage for start-stop hybrid cars less expensive.
So will BEA be serious enough with serious EJB 3.0 Support?
Bottom line, if BEA had another offer or is truly "negotiating in the wings," I'd think such info would either be leaked or presented to the market or to ORCL. Instead, all we've read is puffery & the market isn't buying it.
Bottom line, BEA has no other offer, & is likely not talking to anyone with a real interest in acquiring BEA that is willing to take on ORCL. If such were the case, such "news" would have been made available to the market. It hasn't b/c none exists.