HP has proposed to acquire data storage company 3PAR for $24 per share in cash, or roughly $1.6 billion. Thus, it trumps Dell’s offer to buy out the company for $18 per share or $1.13 billion.
The proposed transaction represents a 33.3 percent premium above the price proposed by Dell, is not subject to any financing contingency and has been approved by HP’s board of directors. If and once approved by 3PAR’s board, HP expects the transaction to close by the end of the calendar year.
Salesforce just released Q2 financial results today, posting record revenue of $394 million, an increase of 25% on a year-over-year basis. Q2 GAAP diluted earnings per share decreased 35% year-over-year to $0.11, and non-GAAP diluted earnings per share was flat year-over-year at $0.29. Net Income came in at $14.7 million, down from $21.1 million in the same quarter in 2009.
The company added 5,100 paying customers during the quarter, 500 of which came through the acquisition of Jigsaw earlier this year. Salesforce says that it currently has 82,400 paying customers in total.
Credit card juggernaut MasterCard has agreed to acquire DataCash Group in a bid to drive its e-commerce payment expansion in the Asia-Pacific region, Europe and Australia.
U.S.-based MasterCard, which makes money from processing credit and debit card payments on its network, said it would pay 360 pence per share for the British processor of Internet credit-card sales, representing a 54 percent premium to the company’s Wednesday close.
The deal represents approximately £333 million (roughly $520 million), to be paid in cash.
Marlin Equity Partners, a Los Angeles-based private investment firm with over $1 billion of capital under management, has agreed to acquire all outstanding shares of core systems software company Phoenix Technologies common stock for $3.85 per share in cash, or approximately $139 million in total consideration.
The purchase price represents a premium of approximately 27% over Phoenix’s closing share price of $3.02 on August 17. The company is listed on NASDAQ under the symbol PTEC.
Marin Software, a startup that creates search engine management software for advertisers and agencies, is now offering advanced applications for advertising on Facebook.
Marin’s Search Marketer platform now offers advertisers and agencies the ability to manage Facebook Ads alongside paid search programs on Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. Advanced solutions for Facebook include algorithmic bidding, audience segmentation, and ad rotation features. Campaigns on Facebook can be segmented by gender, age, geography, or even likes and interests of audiences.
In the wake of former CEO Mark Herd’s sexual harassement scandal, HP is announcing that it is acquiring Fortify, a software security company. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Fortify’s Software Security Assurance products and services protect companies from security threats in busines software applications. The company’s software evaluates and test software code for security flaws while programs are actually being developed. Fortify has previously collaborated with HP, integrating its software with HP products in June 2009.
Intel has just announced that it will acquire Texas Instruments’ cable modem product line. Terms of the deal, which is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2010, were not disclosed.
Unsurprisingly, Intel says the acquisition will help further its foray into providing chips to the cable and consumer electronics industries. Intel wants to be able to provide products that provide on foundation for consumer elextronics devices such as set top boxes, digital TVs, and blu-ray disc players. The unit’s advanced system-on-chip (SoC) products will be based on Intel’s Atom processors.
Only days after buying DataCap, Big Blue has made another purchase. IBM is acquiring marketing software giant Unica approximately $480 million, or approximately $21 per share. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2010.
Unica, a publicly held company that traded on the Nasdaq exchange, develops an enterprise marketing management software that helps companies to manage web marketing efforts, including web and customer analytics, search marketing, email marketing, and website marketing/personalization.
IBM has acquired Datacap, a company that provides a data and document capturing and processing software. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Datacap software automates image and data entry from a variety of documents and forms, including medical claims, tax returns and highly variable documents such as invoices and shipping documents for more precise business outcomes. Datacap extracts and converts data from a number of file types, including email files, JPEG and GIF image files, and PowerPoint presentations in seconds.
