Oracle continued on its relentless quest to buy as many loss-making ‘cloud’ companies as it can fit in its basket with the acquisition of Nasdaq-listed, Massachusetts-based IP ‘session border control technology’ developer, Acme Packet. Oracle is paying $29.25 a share – a 22% premium to its prior close – valuing Acme at some $1.7b (net of cash).
Though very profitable in 2011 ($44.4m net earnings), Acme lost net $5.2m in 2012 on revenues of $274m, 11% down yoy (product sales actually declined 17%). This came as Acme ramped sales & marketing cost from 34% of revenues in 2011 to 50% in 2012 in finest ‘cloud’ tradition. Having said that, Acme’s products appear not to be delivered ‘as a service’ but run on Acme’s range of purpose-built hardware platforms or general purpose servers.
Just a few weeks ago Oracle acquired loss-making SaaS marketing player Eloqua (see here). It’s not just Oracle, of course – all the ‘majors’ are trying to outdo each other in a competition to see who can buy the most ridiculously overpriced loss-making bits of IP they possibly can. Not sure what the prize is, though.