Possible predators . . . .
First, I'll say that I think it is more likely that the Board wants to reform the company rather than sell it, especially since they fired Sorden at the same time the rest of the activity took place. Further, I think Trimble was talked into staying (or revoked an "I quit!") during the day yesterday, which makes more sense if there isn't a takeover underway.
But. . . there is a Yahoo post out there saying there is a strong rumor in Germany that Siemens has an interest in Trimble. That's not a bad rumor, if they are making progress on a Holy Grail chip . . . or if anyone else is, Trimble could be very attractive to them.
And in the category of old news, there was an early 1997 report that had Trimble listed among possible acquisition targets of Northrop. Re: Qualcomm, it wouldn't necessarily be bad for a good manufacturer to take over a good engineering/inventing outfit. Ford did that with Jaguar a few years ago.
Price to sales can be tricky. Novatel at 5:1 was not a better acquisition than Ashtech at, well, we never really were able to figure it out that very well, but probably about 1.5 to 1. Trimble is stronger and bigger than either one of them. I'm sure you could make a case for a 3:1 ratio, except that the stock is so low right now that you'd need a bidding war to get there. Maybe we could hear from Skip Paul or J. Saf on this subject.
One more point of interest: In retrospect, it is really striking (I even noticed it last week) that the buyback program was announced by the CFO and not by Charles Trimble. It lends some credence to Altaf's power struggle hypothesis. Who would have been the third vote on the Board? |
