By Brenon Daly
Since when does an army with out its best general go on the attack? That technique would seem to go in opposition to convention, however Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) has accomplished just that since dumping Mark Hurd for his foibles. The tech big has chased a pair of offers to valuations which can be essentially 2-3 periods the prevailing marketplace multiple. HP’s recent bidding war over 3PAR (PAR) and the purchase of ArcSight (ARST) shows a level of aggressiveness that indicates to us that the drivers for the acquisitions may have been emotional as well as financial, at least to a small degree.
If we step back and look at the setting for both bargains, we can’t help but conclude that HP announced the transactions at a time when it looked vulnerable. Its star CEO had dramatically crashed back to earth,
Windows 7 Professional, while its board (but again) appeared to have bungled what looked like a fairly routine internal investigation. Statements by the company that it was ‘business as usual’ didn’t get much of a hearing on Wall Street. Shares that changed hands in the low $50s in April have been worth less than $40 for much of the past month. HP’s market cap lingers below $100bn,
Microsoft Office 2007 Enterprise, despite the company ringing up sales of about $120bn.
At the risk of drifting too far into psychology, we wonder if the specials weren’t a bit of overcompensation. (Certainly, paying 11x trailing sales for 3PAR might be considered overcompensation,
Microsoft Office 2010 Professional, or at the least, ‘heavy compensation,’ if you’ll forgive the pun.) If investors and others were going to view HP as weak or directionless while its corner office was empty,
Office 2010 Download, well, HP could use its vast resources to counter with a signal to remind everyone that it was formidable,
Windows 7 Activation, with or without having a fulltime CEO. Of course, we’re just playing armchair psychologist here. But something beyond just straight numbers seemed to be at work in HP’s recent moves.
Microsoft Office 2007 Enterprise Is HP Overcompens
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