By Rex Crum, MarketWatch
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Oracle Corp. on Monday confirmed
what had been speculated for about a week when the
business-software giant said it would acquire Micros Systems Inc.
for $5.3 billion.
Micros (MCRS) specializes in software and services for the
hotel, restaurant and hospitality industries that is used for
functions such as reservation systems, business analytics, and
point-of-sales devices. Oracle (ORCL) expects the acquisition to
close in the second half of the year and for the deal to have an
immediate positive impact on its earnings.
Oracle has a history of making acquisitions in order to expand
into new industries, and Daniel Ives, who covers Oracle for FBR
Capital Markets, said he expects the Micros buy to lead "a surge of
M&A activity at Oracle over the coming year."
"The company needs to quickly put more growth fuel in its
engine," Ives said. "As evidenced by Oracle's soft May [earnings
quarter] results last week, [CEO Larry] Ellison & co. have some
work ahead of themselves to morph Oracle into its next phase for
growth around attacking the cloud."
Ives said the Micros deal makes sense for Oracle because it will
complement the company's current e-commerce platform and "give the
company a potential solution to stave off the emerging threat from
SaaS [software as a service] vendors such as Demandware and
NetSuite."
The deal also marks Oracle's largest acquisition since it bought
Sun Mircrosystems for $7.4 billion in 2010.
Micros shares rose 3.3%, to $67.95, or almost to the $68-a-share
value agreed to in the Oracle acquisition. Oracle shares rose 1% to
$41.29.
Among other tech stocks, Groupon Inc. (GRPN) rose 4% to $6.40
after Piper Jaffray said that the number of deals available through
the Groupon site is growing.
Pandora Media Inc. (P) was up more than 2%, and gains also came
from Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), Facebook Inc. (FB) and Micron
Technology Inc. (MU).
The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index (RIXF) was off by 7 points
at 4,361 and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX) also dipped
into the red.
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