EMC Up on Oracle Buyout Rumors
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Shares of EMC (EMC) jumped as high as 5% in morning trading Thursday, after a report said Oracle (ORCL) - Get Report could acquire the storage equipment maker.
Rumors began circulating after a Citigroup analyst report issued Wednesday pegged EMC -- as well as
BMC Software
(BMC)
,
Cerner
(CERN) - Get Report
,
F5
(FFIV) - Get Report
and
Mellanox
(MLNX) - Get Report
-- as potential targets for Oracle. EMC is a "long shot," the report said.
|
While a deal with Oracle is possible because of EMC's attractive storage business, EMC's 80% stake in virtualization software company
VMWare
(VMW) - Get Report
might add complications, Avian Securities analyst Matt Bryson said. EMC has traditionally taken a "hands off" approach with VMWare, and Oracle "might have a hard time with
that." Oracle has also made investments to build up its own virtualization platform, and VMware would be "a dead expense," he said.
If Oracle decided to buy EMC, it might consider divesting VMWare, Bryson added.
Bryson also deemed other rumors circulating about a combination between
Microsoft
(MSFT) - Get Report
and EMC as implausible. "Could Microsoft be interested in VMware?" he said. "That's more interesting, but not EMC as a whole."
Data storage companies have already seen a string of buyouts in the last few months, including
HP's
(HPQ) - Get Report
$2.35 billion acquisition of
3Par
in September, and
IBM's
(IBM) - Get Report
purchase of
Neteeza
for $1.7 billion.
EMC and Oracle could not be reached for immediate comment.
In midday trading, EMC was up 3.74% to $21.06 and Oracle was down 1.4% to $28.20.
--Written by Olivia Oran in New York.
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