< DEMP > is looking strong on Buyout Rumor from Street.com. When you have a chance, can you check out the block buys? Thanks
Street.com story
Just a thought: Don't overlook the possible importance of
last week's announcement that eBay (EBAY:Nasdaq) is
buying bricks-and-mortar auction house Butterfield &
Butterfield Auctioneers. As long as Internet stocks
remain high, some folks think more Internet companies
could do these kinds of deals to snare market share (and
credibility) in their respective industries. A possible target,
according to one of this column's sources, would be a chain
like Drug Emporium (DEMP:Nasdaq) (which has indicated
to investors that it's happy going it alone.)
It has only about 140 stores (plus franchises), but also has
been building a fairly sophisticated, if not stealth, online
drugstore operation. (It's stealth because the company, to
its credit, has gone out of its way not to hype its online
operation until it's fully operational.)
Through its stores, according to our source (who is long
Drug Emporium), it currently does around 8.5 million
prescriptions per year. If it marketed its online pharmacy to
in-store customers, some would be likely to switch. Even if
that number were a paltry 10%, that would be an instant,
additional 850,000 customers for a fledgling online
drugstore chain like Drugstore.com or PlanetRx.com.
Put another way, this source says, using richly valued
stock to purchase a company like Drug Emporium would be
a fast way for an online druggist "to become No. 1 right
away." And, if the scenario were to play out, they wouldn't
even have to spend bundles in cash to do a portal deal to
get there. |
