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Apple has had some decent ones. P.A. Semi, notably. And for $278 million dollars, the ROI on that was ludicrous. But overall, yes. I can think of so many large
by perardi 6y ago
Apple has had some decent ones. P.A. Semi, notably. And for $278 million dollars, the ROI on that was ludicrous.
But overall, yes. I can think of so many large-scale acquisitions that didn't go so swimmingly.
- AOL/Time-Warner
- Ford/its stable of luxury brands like Jaguar and Land Rover
- Compaq/HP
- Daimler/Chrysler
It seems like these “big” mergers tend to now show the synergies people promise. Maybe it’s just too much culture to integrate.
- tambourine_man 6y ago>Apple has had some decent ones. P.A. Semi, notably And, let's not forget, NeXT. Probably one of the best U$400 something million ever spent.
- microtherion 6y agoIt's funny how there seems to be so little correlation between acquisition prices and eventual value. The PA Semi acquisition was an enormous success at what was at the time a tiny price. NeXT was an enormous success, though $400M at the time was a bet-the-farm price for Apple. In contrast, while I'm sure Beats has easily paid for itself, $3B was not exactly cheap, and the results were not 10x PA Semi.
- mbesto 6y agoI think it's impossible to accurately determine the ROI of an acquisition with incomplete data. There's way too many factors at play.
- tambourine_man 6y agoI remember people being flabbergasted by the price they paid for PA Semi. Dividing the price by the number of engineers seemed indeed ludicrous. And yet, here we are.
- microtherion 6y agoAt the time, there were only 3 comments on HN I could find. One of them was certainly questioning the decision: [1] But wmf was right on the money [2]: "Maybe Apple thinks they can outdo the Cortex". [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=171511 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=171511 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=171879 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=171879
- saagarjha 6y agoI'm amused to see 'wmf commenting today about M1 ;)
- tambourine_man 6y agoGood find. I was a lot more focused on PPC back then. After Apple switched to Intel, I didn’t really see the reason for PA Semi’s acquisition. The iPhone’s magic was all about the software to me.
- perardi 6y agoI thought about NeXT, but that was a bit of a weird one, because NeXT executives and technology replaced a lot of Apple’s executives and technology. That ended up being a stealth takeover by NeXT.
- bredren 6y agoSkype’s eventual acquisition by Microsoft is an interesting one. Can anyone contextualize the horse trading that led to that? >September 2005, eBay acquired Skype for $2.6 billion. In September 2009, Silver Lake, Andreessen Horowitz, and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board announced the acquisition of 65% of Skype for $1.9 billion from eBay. Microsoft bought Skype in May 2011 for $8.5 billion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype
- mbesto 6y agoTech M&A guy here. This is survivorship bias at its finest. How about Facebook's acquisition of Instagram? Google's acquisition of YouTube? Android? DoubleClick? Amazon's acquisition of Twitch? I could go on. For the record, yes there are VERY many acquisitions that go wrong, especially when you get to the $B+ value. The parent's characterization seems in line with the "no one ever got fired for using IBM" and that sentiment is grossly unjustified for M&A. There are a bunch of other factors that go into corporate strategy. One example - buying a competitor to eliminate competition and thus protecting future dollars.
- sumedh 6y ago> Facebook's acquisition of Instagram? Google's acquisition of YouTube? Android? DoubleClick? Amazon's acquisition of Twitch? I could go on. These examples are not comparable to what the OP was saying, e.g AOL/Time-Warner, Compaq/HP are mergers of giants with lot of employees.
- mbesto 6y agoOk fine. Here ya go: BoA/Merrill Lynch Shell/Royal Dutch Sanofi/Avantis Glaxo/SmithKline P&G/Gillette Roche/Genetech Exxon/Mobil Conoco/Philips Disney/Fox AT&T has had so many successful mergers that the government has basically had to split them up every time because it made them into a monopoly. Should I go on? EDIT: PS - DoubelClick in 2007 was considered "BIG". It had 1200 employees and was bought for $3.1B. Which was A LOT at the time.
- sumedh 6y agoThose are good examples, you should have included them in the first post.