Seagate Up on Deal Talks; Cubist Slides
Updated from Thursday with additional information
NEW YORK (
) -- Shares of
Seagate Technology
(STX) - Get Report
starred in after-hours action on Thursday after the hard drive maker acknowledged it's engaged in talks about going private.
The company said it received a preliminary indication of interest from an undisclosed party about a potential deal and that it's now opened up discussions. Seagate has hired
Morgan Stanley
(MS) - Get Report
and
Perella Weinberg Partners
to advise it during the process and its board will evaluate any proposal resulting from the talks as well as other strategic alternatives.
Bloomberg
reports Friday that TPG Capital and KKR are in talks to acquire Seagate Technology. The private-equity firms are considering an offer of about $16 a share, which would value the company at $7.55 billion.
Bloomberg
cited two people with knowledge of the matter.
TPG and KKR are looking to contribute about $4 billion in equity and may seek other buyout funds as partners. Bain Capital also is interested in the deal, according to one person familiar with the firm,
Bloomberg
says.
Shares of Seagate were halted shortly after the close Thursday as the news was disseminated. It was last quoted at $15.40, up 21%, in extended trading on volume of more than 4.7 million, according to
Nasdaq.com
. Based on Thursday's regular session finish at $12.69, the shares were down roughly 30% so far in 2010, but they had rebounded admirably since scraping a 52-week low of $9.84 on Aug. 27.
The appeal of Seagate for any potential acquirer rests on its leader status in both the overall hard drive and enterprise storage markets with shares of more than 30% and close to 60% respectively, according to ThinkEquity LLC, which coincidentally initiated coverage of the stock with a hold rating and $14 price target on Thursday.
Another big allure is likely the company's healthy free cash flow. ThinkEquity estimates Seagate generated $1.37 billion in cash on revenues of $11.4 billion in fiscal 2010 ended on July 2, and it's expecting the company to generate another $1.15 billion in free cash flow in fiscal 2011, despite margin compression and nominal revenue growth.
"Considering the strong FCF
free cash flow model, we are not surprised that Seagate has attracted private interest recently," the firm said in its note, referring to
media reports
in late September that discussions with buyout firms
TPG Capital
and
Silver Lake
had fallen through.
Seagate's news lifted the other publicly traded drive makers with
Western Digital
(WDC) - Get Report
tacking on more than 9% to $32.18 on volume of around 750,000, and
Quantum
(QTM) - Get Report
adding 4.8% to $2.84 with almost 45,000 shares changing hands.
Seagate is set to report its fiscal 2011 first-quarter results on Oct. 20 with Wall Street expecting a profit of 45 cents a share in the September quarter on revenue of $2.72 billion.
The big after-hours movers on earnings news were
(GOOG) - Get Report
and
Advanced Micro Devices
(AMD) - Get Report
, which rose 9% and 5% respectively after each topped Wall Street's earnings expectations.
Cubist Pharmaceuticals
(CBST)
, however, was lower, trading down 3% to $24.25 on volume of more than 40,000, after releasing mixed third-quarter results.
The Lexington, Mass.-based biotech posted a profit of $31.2 million, or 50 cents a share, well head of the average analysts' view of 41 cents a share, but sales of $162.1 million were below the consensus of $166.4 million and represented a sequential decline from the company's second-quarter total of $168.5 million.
Cubist also tightened its revenue outlook for the full year, forecasting a range of $645 million to $650 million compared to its prior projection for revenue of between $627 million and $652 million, which it provided in April.
--
Written by Michael Baron in New York.
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Michael Baron
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