Something really been bothering me about ALL the articles mentioning the purchase of WordPerfect and the sale to Corel. The purchase price of WordPerfect to Novell ranges anywhere from $855 million to $1.4 billion depending on the article. (I believe when it was first announced according to the stock price it was about 1.4 billion but by the time the deal was settled, so had the stock price and the deal was closer to the $855 million price range - anyone know for sure?) Anyway somewhere between $855 mil and $1.4 bil. The sale to Corel again has been all over the place but somewhere around $130 Million.
The only problem that I have with this is that what Novell sold to Corel ($130 mil)is not the same thing they bought from WordPerfect earlier ($855 mil to $1.4 bil). I wish I could find some hard numbers but basically Corel got "the PerfectOffice application suite, WordPerfect word processing applications, QuattroPro spreadsheet and related software" (right from the press release - Jan 31, 1996). This is not all that Novell bought from WordPerfect for $855 to 1.4 Bil. Novell had already sold WP Manufacturing, Wp Magazine, WP Windows Magizine. they didn't sell any of the 12+ buildings, property, and land in Orem(no small chunk of change), plus various other portions that were already sold (Unix ect). Not to mention GroupWise, Envoy, and other technologies.
The bottom line is that the deal was not as bad as the articles that constantly state... bought WordPerfect for 1.4 Bil, sold for 130 million. What a loss!!!!!
If anyone can find some real numbers and facts, I would be very interested to see them. This doesn't change what is happening to stock price but I wanted to get this off my chest.
One of these days when when all these Companies start to realize that NT just isn't going to cut it, and they spend millions of dollars to try to make it work, and find that those liars in Redmond snowballed them again, I will be laughing my head off. I may be broke, but I'll have a good laugh.
LL |
