4 ms·

Interesting on a lot of levels. One is that they quote it as being a 40% premium to when a hedge fund bought a stake supporting a sale, but only a few percent

Interesting on a lot of levels. One is that they quote it as being a 40% premium to when a hedge fund bought a stake supporting a sale, but only a few percent above today's close. This suggests that the market was betting on a sale at around this place. (Compare to Marketo, which sold at well above the market value) Another interesting piece is that Qlik had a massive drop (~30%) in Q1 revenues versus Q4. [0] Enterprise software sales is seasonal, but this was pretty extreme. Another interesting piece is their SG&A is very close to their revenue, and dwarfs R&D. This suggests that Sales and Support is what's going to get the big axe. [0] https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AQLIK&fstype=ii&ei=IdVQV_naKMqxiwKiyby4CA https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AQLIK&fstype=ii&ei=...

chris_wot 10y ago
I can't say their support was great. Their server version seems to be full of security holes, I'm sure there are zero days circulating they don't know about.
sjbase 10y ago
As far as the "40% premium" goes: > This price represents a premium of 40% to the Company’s unaffected 10 day average stock price prior to March 3, 2016 of $21.83 Basically they took at 10-day average around a (somewhat) arbitrary date to price the stock for that 40% number. "Somewhat" because that date was when Eliott Management, an activist investor fund, bought a giant chunk of Qlik. That signaled a likely upcoming acquisition (which, as you said, the market was betting on). Thoma probably argues that signal moved the stock above it's "true" price. The counterargument would be a defense of the efficient markets hypothesis: that the true price isn't about signals and technicals, it's just what someone is willing to pay.
- mathattack 10y ago
  I would think that Elliott's acquisition was that an acquisition might happen - what surprised me was that the price barely moved after that. Usually there's some kind of bidding war at the end. Or a chance that the acquisition falls through for a while. (Look at how long it took for Yahoo to finally get moving that way) It's rare that the early information hits a bullseye 3 months later.

chris_wot 10y ago

I can't say their support was great. Their server version seems to be full of security holes, I'm sure there are zero days circulating they don't know about.

sjbase 10y ago

As far as the "40% premium" goes: > This price represents a premium of 40% to the Company’s unaffected 10 day average stock price prior to March 3, 2016 of $21.83 Basically they took at 10-day average around a (somewhat) arbitrary date to price the stock for that 40% number. "Somewhat" because that date was when Eliott Management, an activist investor fund, bought a giant chunk of Qlik. That signaled a likely upcoming acquisition (which, as you said, the market was betting on). Thoma probably argues that signal moved the stock above it's "true" price. The counterargument would be a defense of the efficient markets hypothesis: that the true price isn't about signals and technicals, it's just what someone is willing to pay.

mathattack 10y ago
I would think that Elliott's acquisition was that an acquisition might happen - what surprised me was that the price barely moved after that. Usually there's some kind of bidding war at the end. Or a chance that the acquisition falls through for a while. (Look at how long it took for Yahoo to finally get moving that way) It's rare that the early information hits a bullseye 3 months later.