Compellent Technologies (CML, $18.56) rose 4.2% today on heavy volume of 2.85 million shares (3.8X average daily volume) as speculators positioned themselves for more potential M&A activity in the storage sector.
Compellent jumped 18.5% yesterday on 3.2 million shares after Dell bailed out of the 3PAR bidding war. Traders think Dell could now make a run at Compellent, which has a market cap of just $590 million even after all of these recent gains. The company has $132 million in cash & investments on the balance sheet.
For 2010, Compellent is expected to come in with revenue of around $149 million, with the consensus for 2011 showing growth of 22% to $182.2 million.
Compellent has struggled with Wall Street expectations in the past, with the stock falling 25% in one day in April and 24% during another session in February. Compellent shares traded as high as $24.95 in January.
VMware (VMW, $84.49) trades to a new 52-week high today as the big VMworld 2010 lovefest comes to a close.
More than 17,000 attendees flocked to SF this week to get all hopped up on virtualization.
VMware now sports a market cap of close to $35 billion. EMC bought the company in January 2004 for just $625 million and is still the majority owner.
I’d love to see Cisco Systems make a bid for EMC to get at VMware. And I’d also love to see Larry Ellison start a bidding war. Now THAT would be some fun in the tech world.
On the ArcSight (ARST, $37.84) fiscal Q1 call last night, CEO Tom Reilly said he would not address any rumors or speculation regarding the company’s potential sale.
The Wall Street Journal last week said the company had put itself up for sale, which resulted in a 30% one-day spike in the share price. (For more, see TechStock Radar—August 26, 2010).
ArcSight, a provider of network-security software and appliances, reported excellent numbers for the July quarter, with revenue up 37% to $48.1 million, above the consensus of $45.5 million. Per-share earnings of 18 cents topped the consensus by five cents.
The company added 75 new customers and they accounted for 33% of product revenue. International revenue (representing 19% of total revenue) jumped 61%, propelled by 56% growth in EMEA, the best quarter ever for that region. ArcSight now has 100 channel partners across Europe.
The top verticals for the quarter: financial (34% of revenue), government (27%) and retailers (10%). There was one 10% customer, a government account. There were four deals in the quarter worth more than $1 million each.
ArcSight ended July with cash & investments of $150.7 million.
For fiscal Q2, the company sees EPS of 19 cents to 20 cents (the consensus is 17 cents) on revenue of $55 million to $57 million, vs. the consensus of $52.6 million.
Shares of storage-software vendor CommVault Systems (CVLT, $26.61) are on the rise again on renewed chatter that Dell might be interested in the company now that the 3PAR bid is history.
CommVault is up 7.2% on heavy volume of around 1 million shares. The stock rose 32.5% in August thanks mainly to acquisition rumors.
Dell has been a rumored buyer of CommVault for more than a year. Of course, CommVault was a lot cheaper back then—it now sports a market cap of $1.15 billion.
Dell is done. The bidding war for 3PAR (PAR, $32.78) is over.
HP wins the prize at $33 a share, 83% above Dell's original offer of $18. Now HP faces the deal hangover and the reality of making this pricey acquisition work. Good luck with that.
Dell will take its $72-million break-up fee and go home, or onto the next target.
Hewlett-Packard ups its bid for 3PAR (PAR, $33.60) to $33 a share in cash after Dell raised its bid to $32.
Dell is getting desperate in its offer demands. It should just give up now as it’s starting to look pathetic. As part of its latest bid, Dell increased the termination fee to $92 million and included a multi-year reseller agreement, which would be assumed by any acquirer (including HP). That’s ridiculous.
Dell must just be messing with HP now. The market senses this is basically over as PAR shares are trading just 60 cents above HP’s bid.
Blue Coat Systems (BCSI, $21.05) shares are up nearly 12% today on heavy volume of 2 million shares following the announcement of a new CEO and a Needham upgrade.
New CEO Michael Borman is a skilled former-IBMer who last year as CEO of Avocent engineered the sale of that company to Emerson Electric for $1.2 billion.
Needham applauds Blue Coat for making changes at the top after recent stumbles in Europe. The firm set a price target of $27.
For more on Blue Coat, see TechStock Radar—August 30, 2010.
RightNow Technologies (RNOW, $17.27) has broken out to the upside, pushing through recent resistance just above $17.
The RSI is rising from 65.1.
Next up, traders will be watching resistance from late April in the $19 to $19.15 range.
Isilon Systems (ISLN, $20.75) hit a new 52-week high at the open. The stock rose 13.7% in August on takeover speculation.
Two other smaller storage players also had a good August:
*CommVault Systems (CVLT, $24.86) +32.5%
*Compellent Technologies (CML, $15.68) +13.9%
