SAP, which hasn’t been able to get much cloud traction on its own, said Saturday that it’s buying SuccessFactors and its web-based software for $3.4 billion.
The $40-a-share cash offer amounts to a hungry 52% premium or 16.5 times SuccessFactors’ $205.9 million revenue last year.
Pretty sweet for a little 10-year-old company that’s lost more than $40 million so far this year on revenue up 59%. Last year it lost $12.5 million. Its stock closed at $26.25 Friday although it’s ranged between $19.46 and $40.44 in the last 52 weeks.
The acquisition is indicative of the emerging trend to the cloud and SAP’s great rival Oracle, which used to be pretty snooty about the cloud, is feeling the same pressures. In October it said it would put some of its traditional programs in the cloud and then, as a catch-up, agreed to pay $1.4 billion for online CRM house RightNow Technologies.
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