Here's a link to a Raging Bull post that has a 7/28/00 report by Josepthal & Co on IFMX:
ragingbull.altavista.com
Here's an excerpt:
We contend that at current price levels, the market is
valuing the whole of IFMX at less than the sum of its three
parts: the TransAct, or traditional database segment, the
Business Intelligence (BI) segment, and the e-business
solutions segment.
- We think that the traditional database portion of the
company should be worth at least 1x sales, or $560 million
on an annualized basis.
- The BI segment, which includes Ardent's DataStage, the
Red Brick Decision server, and the Informix Extended
Parallel Server,could fetch 10x sales (using an average
price-to-sales multiple for the BI space) or close to $1.3
billion. In our opinion, this estimate is conservative, as
Ardent's DataStage product on its own is capable of
achieving at least $85 million in revenues annually, with a
growth rate of over 50%; the nearest comparable to DataStage
is Informatica (OTC: INFA-$49) which is awarded a 22x price-
to-sales multiple. This would warrant a $1.9 billion
valuation for DataStage alone.
- The E-Business solutions portion of IFMX is generating
revenues of $284 million on an annualized basis and is
growing at a triple-digit rate. An average multiple awarded
a set of Internet infrastructure comparables (including
Vitria (OTC: VITR-$45-NR), Interwoven (OTC: IWOV-$60 7/16),
and BEA Systems (OTC: BEAS-$43 1/2), for example) is about
34.3x fiscal 2000 sales. This would assign a value of as
much as $9.7 billion to the E-business solutions segment.
We remind investors that included in the E-business
solutions segment are Informix's database products designed
specifically for the Internet, e.g., i.Foundation, i.Reach
and i.Sell. Also included are Cloudscape - an industry-
leading Java database for embeddable systems and distributed
applications - and Media 360 - a complete media asset
management solution for loading, digitizing, indexing,
editing, storing, retrieving, browsing, playing, protecting,
distributing, and archiving any type of media asset. e.g.,
audio and video.
- By our calculation, including a 40% discount for risk
factors, which we admit are significant, the three parts of
Informix valued separately should be worth about $23.
Phil |
