Shutterfly May Be Attracting More Suitors; Shares Fly
By JAMES DETAR, INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 09/22/2014 02:19 PM ET
Shares of photo-sharing site Shutterfly (NASDAQ: SFLY) jumped as much as 6% Monday on a report that private equity firm Silver Lake Partners is in talks to buy the company.
The report followed similar recent articles by Bloomberg News and others, citing unnamed sources, that Hellman & Friedman and Bain Capital are interested in acquiring the Redwood City, Calif.-based firm.
Analysts have estimated that Shutterfly could fetch as much as $2 billion in a sale, and some reports said that a deal could be concluded as early as this month.
As IBD reported earlier, sales growth for the maker of greeting cards, stationery, photo gifts, home decorations and more began lagging overall U.S. retail growth early this year amid rising competition from Facebook (NASDAQ: FB), CVS Caremark's (NYSE: CVS) drugstore photo operations and others.
Last quarter, Shutterfly reportedly entered into an agreement with investment bank Qatalyst Partners to aid its search for possible buyers.
Shutterfly had earlier managed to gain photo-printing share vs. Hewlett-Packard's (NYSE: HPQ) Snapfish and retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores (NYSE: WMT).
Shutterfly shares were up 5% to 49.92 in afternoon trading in the stock market today (Monday).
Facebook, whose stock is on the IBD Leaderboard list of top-rated stocks, was down 2% amid a market pullback. Hewlett-Packard eased 1%, and Wal-Mart was also down fractionally.
Follow James DeTar on Twitter: @IBD_JDeTar.
news.investors.com |
