Euronews: AlcaLu Nears $1.3B Unit Sale
Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU), Orange (NYSE: FTE), Deutsche Telekom AG (NYSE: DT) and Telia Company get things moving in today's regional roundup.
Private equity firm Permira is looking the most likely buyer of AlcaLu's Enterprise division, according to Reuters. Permira is offering US$1.3 billion. (See AlcaLu Seeks Buyer for Enterprise Biz.)
Back in February France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom announced a general collaboration covering a range of areas, not least machine-to-machine (M2M) technologies. Now Nordic operator TeliaSonera has joined the party, bringing, in theory at least, enhanced M2M service to its customers in Scandinavia and the Baltics. (See TeliaSonera Crashes M2M Party, Euronews: Feb. 11 and FT, DT Team on Customer Benefit.)
U.K. incumbent BT Group plc (NYSE: BT; London: BTA) has launched a new authentication service aimed at online businesses. BT Managed Authentication supplements the customer’s traditional username and password with an extra one-time-only password, which is generated by a unique algorithm running on a device or piece of software issued to each individual customer, thereby helping prevent password theft. (See BT Offers Managed Authentication.)
Hollywood may be still producing its fair share of clunkers, but that hasn't stopped the number of movies being illegally downloaded in the U.K. from rising nearly 30 percent in five years, reports the BBC, citing research by Envisional.
— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading
— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading
James_B_Crawshaw
12/5/2012 | 4:59:46 PM
re: Euronews: AlcaLu Nears $1.3B Unit Sale
Alcatel Lucent is valued at 0.56x 2010 sales so if they get 0.75x for Enterprise it would be a good price.
digits
12/5/2012 | 4:59:45 PM
re: Euronews: AlcaLu Nears $1.3B Unit Sale
Is that a fair extrapolation? Maybe that valuation is mainly based on the carrier infrastructure business (mobile in particular) - enterprise may be one of the more valuable parts of the business (albeit non-core, it would seem...)
It's hard to figure out, though, as operating income isn't broken down to that level of granularity, from whjat I can see.
And maybe ALU is undervalued at 0.56 X 2010 sales?
It surprises me that ALU is selling this business at all, but that's another matter...
Pete Baldwin
12/5/2012 | 4:54:51 PM
re: Euronews: AlcaLu Nears $1.3B Unit Sale
Oh noes! The WSJ is reporting today that the Alcalu/Permira deal is dead.
http://online.wsj.com/article/...
But now Aspect Software, owned by Golden Gate Capital, is apparently in the running.
A potential sale at $1.3 billion raises some questions about what's actually up for grabs here....
In 2010, Alcatel-Lucent reported revenues of €1.2 billion (US$1.7 billion) for its Enterprise Applications line of business, representing annual growth of 3.4%.
It does seem like this business line, which seems to mainly comprise the Genesys (contact center technology) and unified communications suites, is what ALU is looking to offload, but can it only attract 75% of annual revenues as a sale price?