Red Hat borrows $500 million
Posted Jan 7, 2004 4:48 UTC (Wed)
by eddelbuettel (guest, #7053)
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Posted Jan 7, 2004 4:52 UTC (Wed)
by DaleQ (subscriber, #4004)
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Posted Jan 7, 2004 5:26 UTC (Wed)
by BrucePerens (guest, #2510)
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But who would give them that sort of sweetheart deal? After all, they are only around $18 now, and thus the investor could just buy the stock.
I think that we are seeing a large investment in RHAT by an investor that does not want their name to become public at this time, because it will be percieved that they have "bought" Red Hat, and that will somehow damage the near-term business prospects of either their company or Red Hat. IBM comes to mind, but it could be a few others, folks we like or folks we don't like. Bruce
Posted Jan 7, 2004 6:37 UTC (Wed)
by robla (subscriber, #424)
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If they buy the debentures at $25/share, and the stock goes down to $6, the investor can still get their $25+0.5% interest out of it. Not a great investment, but not a loss as above. It's a lower risk investment (with a smaller reward). Rob
Posted Jan 7, 2004 14:01 UTC (Wed)
by james (subscriber, #1325)
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Isn't speculating fun!
"IBM as the buyer" makes a lot of sense, especially following up the Novell / SuSE tie-up.
From IBM's point of view, there are now only two major distributions for large-scale serious server deployments. One of them has been bought by a traditional IBM competitor. Whoever bought these debentures has now made it difficult for Red Hat to be bought out by anyone else: they can be converted into voting shares, if necessary.
(I don't know what the US rules say: I believe there are rules in the UK stock market to protect the investments of minority shareholders. The buyer might even have enough share rights to prevent a takeover. And there may be such an agreement in the unseen legalese).
IBM hasn't wanted to create its own distribution. (It occasionally mutters about possible legal liabilities: there's been a lot more of IBM to sue than Mandrake, say).
This would be a good way for them to put money into a big Linux distributor with a good track record of making enhancements and contributing them back, without the slightest suspicion that IBM has undue control over the company. (Compare this with the suspicions that the Canopy Group have been directing SCO's suit, and the possibility that IBM might sue Canopy.)
Red Hat, of course, easily wins the "Major Linux Distributor with the Most Paranoid Policy about Other People's IP" award, so the risk would be tiny, anyway.
Besides, multiple independent distributions serve IBM's purposes just as well as an official IBM distribution competing against independents, and as Bruce says, the status quo keeps the "IBM takeover" paranoia down.
(They're making a lot of money by working with us: why would they want to jeopardise it?)
It could also be IBM making sure that Red Hat has enough money to sue SCO, of course.
Posted Jan 7, 2004 14:05 UTC (Wed)
by bryam (guest, #6857)
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Regards, -Adriano
Posted Jan 7, 2004 10:12 UTC (Wed)
by rjamestaylor (guest, #339)
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Bingo.
One side-effect of a recovering economy is an uptick in mergers & acquisitions. Especially with Novell entering the market with Ximian and SuSE (I bet they have fun company picnics -- kidding) and its own proven, trusted enterprise products based on Linux, RedHat needs to grow to compete.
Interesting times. As an aside, note that Novell and RedHat have comparable market capitalization at $3.99 Billion and $3.2 Billion, respectively. Note also that SCO has a puffed-up market cap ... now remember, their stock has grown tremendously since attacking Linux, more than 18 times the pre-bicycle-analogy price ... of $251 Million. And, like a blowfish, SCO's super-extended market cap is just so much puffery. The real battle for Linux, in a business sense, will be fought out between Novell and RedHat (my guess). I look forward to "UserLinux" (or, PLinux).
Posted Jan 7, 2004 5:06 UTC (Wed)
by laurent (guest, #7539)
[Link] (9 responses)
The beauty of the thing is that they could get revenue from MS paying licenses for use in their products (MS is not likely to use the GPL for any of its products... :-)) Now that's what I would call idemnification :-) Seriously, what could they use these 500 millions for?
Posted Jan 7, 2004 5:09 UTC (Wed)
by laurent (guest, #7539)
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Posted Jan 7, 2004 5:30 UTC (Wed)
by skvidal (guest, #3094)
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sorry. it's the only explanation I could come up with.
Posted Jan 7, 2004 9:42 UTC (Wed)
by stuart (subscriber, #623)
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Stu.
Posted Jan 7, 2004 11:17 UTC (Wed)
by phip (guest, #1715)
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(laser = "ray of light") Thanks for the good laugh, as I imagined the giant frickin' laser
Posted Jan 7, 2004 6:59 UTC (Wed)
by ccyoung (guest, #16340)
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ok - I apologize
Posted Jan 7, 2004 11:00 UTC (Wed)
by djabsolut (guest, #12799)
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Posted Jan 7, 2004 13:27 UTC (Wed)
by sethg (guest, #14970)
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Posted Jan 7, 2004 14:05 UTC (Wed)
by ekj (guest, #1524)
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Now, selling SCO stock short, that's a different matter. A good investment if you ask me. (but you shouldn't, so don't come whining to me when/if it turns out I'm wrong.)
Posted Jan 7, 2004 20:44 UTC (Wed)
by wcooley (guest, #1233)
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Actually, there would be a lot of value in buying out SCOG outside of putting the lawsuit and BS to rest. SCOG had two very good things going for it before it went stupid: It had a very strong reseller channel and a very strong support service, which provided support for all of the major distros. The reseller channel is something Red Hat sorely lacks--right now it only seems to play with ISVs and IHVs, and only really big ones at that; not VARs, systems integrators, etc. I was told a few months ago that something would be in place mid-December, but I haven't seen anything yet. I currently cannot even buy RHES 3 Basic through Ingram-Micro.
Posted Jan 7, 2004 11:50 UTC (Wed)
by johnjones (guest, #5462)
[Link] (12 responses)
they have done a tools comapny = cygnus they have a storage sompany = Sistina TODO o find a clean room JVM o Graphic Display (that X11R6 can draw onto) o Video + sound (sort out On2 and ogg codecs ) FAE - the DirectFB people (JVM inc ?)
Posted Jan 7, 2004 14:02 UTC (Wed)
by rjw (guest, #10415)
[Link] (6 responses)
That is where they see the future of Free Java. I would like to see them set up something which would encourage hardware vendors to open their specs/drivers, but I can't think of how it would work atm... Things Redhat might like to do with the money: * Invest properly in DRI/ Freedesktop.org Xserver, including getting Nvidia to support it (or at least expose enough of their driver that its not tied to XFree86). This is clearly the most promising avenue for the future of X. Unfortunately Redhat seem to disdain the desktop nowadays. * Look into funding capable replacements of proprietary software people consider necessary...video editing, etc...
Posted Jan 7, 2004 14:25 UTC (Wed)
by jdub (guest, #27)
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Posted Jan 7, 2004 16:25 UTC (Wed)
by iabervon (subscriber, #722)
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Posted Jan 7, 2004 20:20 UTC (Wed)
by wcooley (guest, #1233)
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Posted Jan 7, 2004 17:49 UTC (Wed)
by gerv (guest, #3376)
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Redhat are big contributors to GCJ, which includes a JVM. Are you sure? I thought GCJ compiled Java to native code.
Posted Jan 7, 2004 19:21 UTC (Wed)
by khim (subscriber, #9252)
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Of course main idea behind GCJ is compilation to native code, but it does have ability to load arbitrary .class files in runtime - and how it can be done without JVM? So GCJ has full JVM...
Posted Jan 7, 2004 19:51 UTC (Wed)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
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Posted Jan 7, 2004 14:04 UTC (Wed)
by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458)
[Link] (3 responses)
OTOH, the SCO nonsense shows they have to get some armor plating (in form of patents and whatnot) of their own. Buying some companies with strategic patents might be the ticket.
Posted Jan 7, 2004 14:07 UTC (Wed)
by bryam (guest, #6857)
[Link] (2 responses)
Regards,
Posted Jan 7, 2004 14:37 UTC (Wed)
by jjstwerff (subscriber, #4082)
[Link] (1 responses)
Bitmover ;)
Posted Jan 7, 2004 14:43 UTC (Wed)
by laurent (guest, #7539)
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Posted Jan 7, 2004 23:58 UTC (Wed)
by hans (guest, #148)
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But I'm not RedHat, so I don't know...
Easy -- because their stock is now worth six times what it was a year ago. Great way to raise cash when the markets shine on you. RHAT did the same thing right after the IPO when they followed up with a secondary offering.
Red Hat borrows $500 million
Looks like they got a stunning deal on the interest rate. 0.5% is about 7.5% less than my company recently paid to refinanced its debt. This gives Redhat options to buy companies or fund development.
Red Hat borrows $500 million
Rather than a loan, consider this an option to purchase the stock at a fixed price in the future. The investor is considering that RHAT will rise above $25, and that converting the stock will result in profit.There is a lot more significance to this than meets the eye.
If they buy the stock at $18, and it goes down to $6, the investor is out the difference.There is a lot more significance to this than meets the eye.
There is a lot more significance to this than meets the eye.
James.
Oracle in my mind Bruce ;-)There is a lot more significance to this than meets the eye.
Red Hat borrows $500 million
This gives Redhat options to buy companies
How about Redhat buying out SCO (or just SCO's right to UNIX SV that were acquired for just about the same amount...) and striking a deal with Novell to free (as GPL) all of UNIX related rights...Red Hat borrows $500 million
Or it's maybe just to get a crack legal team :-)
Red Hat borrows $500 million
They're building a giant frickin' laser!Red Hat borrows $500 million
brilliant. Here was me fed up with the drudgery of work and this little comment is a ray of light :-)laser
Was the pun intentional?laser
taking aim at SCO headquarters...
to buy out a holding from the Canopy Companyfollow sco example
... or to buy stock in the upcoming Google IPOfollow sco example
If Red Hat and/or IBM bought out SCO, a lot of people would interpret that as an admission that they couldn't beat SCO in the courtroom. A decisive victory in court, on the other hand, would make it harder to spread FUD about Linux IP "infringements", and discourage other companies with dubious claims to imitate SCO's tactics. And once SCO loses, the company will be a lot cheaper.
Red Hat borrows $500 million
Why buy something with no value ? Seriously, I consider SCO to have a negative value at this time. Ofcourse that's not really possible, because even a value of say -1bn$ is still only 0, commonly refered to as "bankrupt".<p>Red Hat borrows $500 million
Red Hat borrows $500 million
would you go after ?mergers & acquisitions If you where redhat who...
Redhat are big contributors to GCJ, which includes a JVM. mergers & acquisitions If you where redhat who...
* Buy Trolltech and LGPL Qt - now that Novell "owns" the most Gnomish company out there, might Redhat get worried? Unlikely... but we can dream.
Red Hat do *not* have disdain for the Linux desktop market these days at all. Far from it. They ship an enterprise desktop release (RHEL WS). What Szulik said in his horribly misinterpreted comments is that the Linux desktop is not necessarily appropriate for consumer users at this stage, but that they are aggressively targeting the enterprise desktop space. I fully agree with him, and I am deeply involved with The GNOME Project. It is very, very sensible for us to look at the desktop space objectively, aim at the right targets, and not pimp ourselves up to something we haven't achieved yet. We *are* getting there, which Szulik also said.
mergers & acquisitions If you where redhat who...
But the enterprise desktop probably doesn't need accelerated 3D video all mergers & acquisitions If you where redhat who...
that much, and the free driver is perfectly fine for 2D.
It does if you're using it where you'd have used an SGI 5 years ago... Although it's certainly true this is a pretty small corner of the enterprise market.
mergers & acquisitions If you where redhat who...
mergers & acquisitions If you where redhat who...
mergers & acquisitions If you where redhat who...
It can go to class files too, and (of course, as other posters have said) needs a classloader in any case.
mergers & acquisitions If you where redhat who...
Red Hat is into Enterprise. I'd guess they are after databases, or some stuff that is hot today, like CRM. Or something to do with web services.
mergers & acquisitions If you where redhat who...
My "adquisitions" wishes/expeculation: Jabber, Covalent, MySQL, Capeclear...mergers & acquisitions If you where redhat who...
Why so far from home...mergers & acquisitions If you where redhat who...
Interesting idea...
mergers & acquisitions If you where redhat who...
If I were RedHat, I would go for CodeWeavers. That way I could integrate support for Windows apps into my distributions, which would be a big selling point for businesses looking at buying my products.mergers & acquisitions If you where redhat who...