90% chances CA will buy SYBS. Buy SYBS's CALLs and CA's PUTs.
Posh,
You are absolutely right about CA. People just don't realize how CA became today's CA.
They were in right place at right time in 80-90. Everybody was expecting that mainframe market is going to collapse soon and that it is going to be replaced by upcoming client/server technologies. Mainframe companies start feeling pressure, because of uncertainty in software market and they have had to invest a lot of money in R&D in order to move it to the next level. So, as result of slow down in mainframe market all those companies have been eaten by CA one by one and only IBM and some privet companies left in mainframe market. CA's business model was very simple and effective. They usually pick a company with weak stock price from software/mainframe sector, which was in transition period and had strong products and customer base. After the acquisition they cut R&D to ZERO, fair almost all people and start collecting maintenance fees and release some minor updates based on features developed by original companies. They repeat it over and over again, destroying companies and products. They are THE expert of making milk from software based companies. So, because dead of mainframe market didn't materialize (client/server technologies could not replace it) they were able to collect a lot of money from it with almost ZERO expenses. In 95 they realized that they have bought everybody (only IBM left) and in order to grow they have to find a new market. They moved to Enterprise Management System with UNICENTER and continue collecting maintenance fees from mainframe product. Unfortunately for CA new strategy requires some investment in R&D(which they never done in the past) and also hires and keeps good high tec people(Chinese dictator is so cheap, that he cannot pay even an average salary in booming sector), but CA could not change own business model and was continue to treat people as a garbage. As, result they end up with clueless people and weak consulting service. This is why they were so desperate to buy CSC. They don't have people to provide consulting services for UNICENTER implementation.
I can't see any future in this company. They have "communist country" mentality, treat own people as replicable garbage and twist customers arms. If you take example from history. You will see that USSR ("the great communist country") came through same stages. First build own infrastructure and economy based on expropriation and slave labor and then collapse because infective economy. They were not able to compete and move economy to the next high tec level, because of human factor (you just cannot survive on slave labor).
Lets go back to the market. I think CA is going to buy SYBS, because of the following reasons:
1. It is cheap and they have to buy somebody
2. They need cross platform Data Base for UNICENTER-TNG. Right know clients have to buy MS-SQL for NT and INGRESS for UNIX. Nobody wants to run INGRESS.
3. They need strong back end for Jasmine ( I think Jasmine is CA's hype, they just cannot develop anything dissent in house with current development resources. I know it for sure. )
4. Sybase consulting service
5. PowerBuilder. Nice framework for UNICENTER front end development.
6. They will get in to the brokerage houses (they mostly run Sybase).
I will short CA and buy SYBS. Also tech analyzes shows that CA is in down turn. Stock could not hold 60's several times despite strong market.
Gall.
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