Tuesday 7 October 2014

Whimper...or not - part 2

I see Hewlett-Packard yesterday indicated that it is considering further dealmaking after confirming its demerger plans.

According to the venerable Financial Times, Cathie Lesjak , chief financial officer, said HP has material non-public information that is "not expected to be resolved before the end of Q4". Analysts interpreted this "information" as a potential acquisition, according to the Financial Times. Here is a link the Financial Times article: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/fddedbcc-4d6f-11e4-9683-00144feab7de.html#slide0

Now, Betaville readers might recall a few weeks ago I wrote a story about CentryLink and Hewlett-Packard's interest in buying US cloud computing company Rackspace Hosting. Here is a link to my piece: http://betaville123.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/centurylink-said-to-have-lined-up.html.

A few days after I published my piece, Rackspace said it had opted against a sale process despite receiving several approaches. Price appeared to be the main sticking point, with Rackspace's board said to be holding out for $55 a share.

Since then, I have taken a bit of stick for my article. Well, I stand by my story 100pc. Indeed, my sources tell me both CenturyLink and Hewlett-Packard submitted approaches for Rackspace just prior to the cloud computing group's decision to call off the sale.

Both approaches, though, were rejected by the US cloud computing company as they were both just  below $55/$56 a share, according to my sources.

So, I wonder whether Hewlett-Packard's material non-public "information" might be an acquisition of Rackspace? (to be clear, I am just positing the question - I don't actually know).

No comments:

Post a Comment