By Rex Crum, MarketWatch
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Oracle Corp. got a mild lift
Monday after the business-software giant confirmed it would acquire
Micros Systems Inc. for $5.3 billion.
Oracle (ORCL) rose by 28 cents a share to close at $41.10 after
it said it would buy Micros (MCRS), a developer of software and
services for the hotel, restaurant and hospitality industries.
Micros' software 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 3.4%, to $67.98, or almost to the $68-a-share
value agreed to in the Oracle acquisition.
Among other tech stocks, Groupon Inc. (GRPN) rose 5.5% to $6.49
after Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster 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 Hewlett-Packard
Co. (HPQ) .
The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index (RIXF) rose less than a
point to close at 4,368, while the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index
(SOX) ended the day in the red.
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