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Corel - Inprise/Borland Merger Off
hwestiii was the first to e-mail with the word that the oft-troubled merger between Corel and Inprise/Borland has been called off. The press release has made its way onto Yahoo! so far, with the given reason being the decline of Corel's stock price making the deal impossible to close.
Very true, there was also a lot of heat from the Inprise shareholders, for the most part they wanted nothing to do with Corel. I can't say that I blame them, there is a lot of turmoil with Corel right now... they badly missed their earnings (this caused the stock to drop quite a bit) and Cowpland has his legal troubles with the insider trading lawsuit. This was not a good fit at all IMHO.
I'm a former Inprise stockholder and I feel bad for the people who didn't jump ship when I did becaue this "merger" has really destroyed the $$ of Inprise. That's not to say that it can't or won't come back, but I'm guessing it will be an uphill battle for them. Anyways.. good luck Inprise/Borland.. I hope you get things straightened out.
Discalaimer: I own some Corel stock (which I could sell today and still make a decent profit...)
/. - they are the primary commercial proponent of what is arguably the most "pure" Linux flavor - Debian.)
There's a lot of Corel bashing going on here. Some of it is deserved (the company is no shining beacon of management success), but Corel stacks up well against many of the current darlings of the industry. This is not a cheerleading attempt for CORL, but an attempt to point out how badly values are out of line with fundamentals across the software industry right now.
(Further, it surprises me that Corel is so villified here on
Let's take a look at Corel (CORL) relative to some of the more favored stocks in the Linux space, say Red Hat (RHAT), VA Linux Systems (LNUX), and Caldera (CALD):
First, a very important distinction: although Corel has cash problems, the company *is* making money, unlike any of the others above. This means it actually has a P/E ratio (curently 17.44 as I write this), unlike the others. That's beacuse CORL actually has some earnings per share:
CORL: +0.31
RHAT: -0.10
CALD: -0.79
LNUX: -1.68(!)
This is called fundamental value, and is the main reason that even if Corel gets strapped for cash ( as is becoming increasingly likely) that someone is likely to step in and buy them out, simply because they are a very good deal.
Now for a look at market cap:
CALD: 382M
CORL: 386M
LNUX: 2064M
RHAT: 3099M
Notice that Caldera has nearly the same market cap as Corel, in spite of the fact that they are losing money like crazy and also unlike Corel, have no established customer base, no established large-scale development organisation, no established large scale technical support organisation, and no distribution channel to speak of. These things matter! They are the things that distinguish a true going concern from one that has merely managed to get a huge IPO pop. The same is true of the others, even though their market caps are much larger. (Exercise for the reader: so which is really worth the most?)
Finally, whether it's to your tastes or not (I prefer Caldera, but that's beside the point) Corel has done a pretty good Linux distro - one which has achieved the significant accomplishment of taking Debian (which is technicaly excellent but had a well-deserved reputation for being a nightmare to install and configure) and making it quite easily usable by mere mortals. For a 1.0 release, I think the product is quite good - better than comparable first efforts from any of the other major distros.
Bash Corel if you want, but recognize that in the real world, where the rubber meets the road - Corel has things that the big market cap guys are still dreaming about. Little things, like paying and loyal customers, that some of us contrarians believe could be important over the long haul...
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
A really good RAD tool with integrated database tools such as kylix would go a long way to make Linux be used more in the corporate world. Its no coincidence that Windows didn't really take off until there was Visual Basic to ease application development.
With a good RAD tool available, applications for Linux will skyrocket. The more applications there are the more people will switch to Linux. When more companies start using Linux, people will realize they don't necessarily need Windows and Office to do their day to day tasks. This is a Good Thing(tm).
Hopefully when Inprise and Trolltech release kylix they will do the smart(Windows-killing) thing and release it under the GPL.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
Molog
So Linus, what are we doing tonight?
So Linus, what are we going to do tonight?
The same thing we do every night Tux. Try to take over the world!
Frankly when they announced the merger I thought it was a bad deal. Wheras Corel markets to the consumer market, Imprise markets to developers and software integrators. IMHO they both would have dragged each other down. As far as working capital concerns it is a non-issue. As the most noticible software company in Canada they are practically a national icon. Financing will be no problem. The bigger concern is probably a takeover bid. But as their shareprice was as low as $2 last fall, if somone didn't swallow them then, they aren't likely to now. I've heard that there is a poison pill ready for any potential hostile takeovers. You have to be seen in public shaking hands with Cowpland and his wife.
The thing that should scare all the Linux-heads here is... it's just more market share for Word!
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DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
I assume that you are talking about the fact that Linux development is done by volunteers. This is changing a little bit now. IBM has thrown their weight behind it porting their database software and GPLing their JFS from AIX. While IBM has been stating that they will continue to focus AIX at higher end customers I know a few people over there who tell me that they are doing their best to beef up that bad boy to make it a real solution for enterprise business. Don't forget SGI pretty much putting quite a few engineers into kernel development as well as porting a lot of great software from IRIX over. SCO seems to have been assimilated as well but too early to make a statement about them. It is true that the Linux stocks took off way too high at first but now they have come to reasonable levels. I believe that RedHat is here to stay as they have a good business model. I know a lot of people complain about their distro is beginning to go downhill but I think that is a little exaggerated but if there is a real problem another distro can kick their butt and RedHat will have to catch up. This having to catch up never happened with MS. Who says having a million and one distro's are bad? Back to my point. Linux is more then a great learning tool. It now has the both the volunteers and those in the corporate world working on it. People thought Linux would never make it as far as it did and people still are calling it a fad but I believe that it or another OSS will continue to evolve and overcome proprietary systems in all areas. I could be wrong but I remember people saying Linux will never be used in businesses back in 96 but it isn't uncommon to find Linux boxen in ISP's and other businesses now as a quick work around or web server. Ok, I have gone on enough.
Molog
So Linus, what are we doing tonight?
So Linus, what are we going to do tonight?
The same thing we do every night Tux. Try to take over the world!
What I am going to bash them on is their approach to the community. I really don't see any place for Corel Linux. They did some of the right things with it, I appreciate their support of Debian, but Corel isn't an OS vendor and I'm not sure how it fits in to their business model. It seems like a lot of redundant effort for them to build a dist, market it, and support it unless they are going to provide some value-add and that's the part I don't like. For Corel, or Caldera too for that matter, value-add is something that doesn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling, it feels like something that is non-standard and it feels like the beginnings of an MS style embrace-extend attack. With Corel, I partially think building their own dist was a way for them to show their committment and create a revenue stream but it just doesn't fit in with the community and it looks a lot more like them getting one of the "need pieces." I see their acquisition of Inprise the same way, it was just another way for them to get the pieces they need to be another MS. MS beats them because they control the platform, so Corel makes their own platform. MS beats them because they control the tools so Corel buys a tool vendor (inprise.) Totally ignoring the fact that MS is thousands of times bigger and has the infrastructure to run that kind of business, and even MS puts out buggy code and misses deadlines and can't really run the business well.
Corel is putting out good linux apps, mainstream apps, apps that get attention and make Linux a more viable platform to more people. They are making an investment in Linux and they should be applauded for that. But if they really want to support the community and do the "Right Thing" I think they should focus on building better apps, start innovating again (?have they ever?) and sure that up. I see no reason at this point for them to acquire inprise other than to "control" more linux software. They need to give up that notion of control.
I also think this will be good for Borland. Borland is making a natural transition to Linux. They are slowly understanding it, supporting it and growing to embrace it. That is the correct course for them, I suspect that a Corel merger could result in a Linux mandate. Borland's support will be much better and stronger as they gradually grow to see that they need Linuxand that they have no choice other than to support it. That is far better than ordering them to do Linux. I'm all about compilers too, I'd love to see IBM's, SGI's, and Borland's compilers all running on Linux, I love gcc but I love having alternatives, I just think the results will be better if Borland grows into Linux rather than jumps in head first. (I own a copy of their OS/2 BC++, I know what the results are when they do that.)
This is my signature. There are many signatures like it but this one is mine..
Did you forget Corel is the biggest supporter of Wine and dedicates developers full time to that project?
Ever wonder how it is becoming so easy to integrate KDE 2.0 and Windows/NT machines through SMB
Did you forget Corel is the biggest linux vendor working on linux integration with Windows? They were the first to implement SMB in the gui with a library and they're happily and non hastily following the license and passing along the code to KDE developers.
Ever wonder how Debian is getting alot of publicity?
Did you forget Corel linux is based on Debian? The standard for the non standard linux?
How can you consider Corel to be riding "The Linux Bandwagon" When Corel is one of the FEW, if the ONLY vendor producing a commercially viable and professionally packaged versions of the Linux OS for WORKSTATION and PERSONAL USE.
Corel doesn't claim to be the server centric sun ball busting software. They do claim ease of use and with that comes the unleashed power of a unix based system.
A full office package, a great v 1.0 integrated and effecient OS, a full distribution and support and retail channel that reaches from the internet to the local software store. And all you can do is bash them?
BORLAND oth has been nothing but a dissapointment and i'm glad they didn't mix. Delphi is good, but pascal is the last thing that needs to be mixed in with linux. and i highly doubt Borland would be much of an adopter of the KDE/Gnome interface and interope with the right people to do what linux people think is right.
Please stop shooting yourself in the foot and crying fowl just because of what the common notion is. I'm so sick of people not thinking for themselves. It seems to be the whole linux bandwagon is an extremest advocate gone afoul. While for some people it is the perfect solution, on the other hand, its only confused the industry that has created it and is the first to cry foul when someone doesn't follow the unwritten rules and justices of the "linux" system.
A while ago I read a story and found this press release. <SARCASM>Suprisingly</SARCASM>, the /. editors declined to post it. Not interesting enough, I guess, but /. is kept in the dark.
Me, I'm not suprised one bit that the merger was called off. I did a search on Daily Yahoo and found this article, too. You'll see that when they negotiated a price, Corel said ``What if it was in stock?'' and Borland said okay, sounds good, but then Corel's stock completely bombed (originally the deal was valued at something like US $1.07 billion and fell down to US $371 million), so Borland (rightly) has doubts. They're getting ripped off and I don't blame them for calling it quits.
Sorry you had to hear about it until after it was too late, but hey, it's slashdot.
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"Duane Dibbley?" -- Duane Dibbley
So they announce the merger, their stocks drop, so they have to call off the merger. Now what happens? Their stock goes up. Does this mean the merger is on again?
This could go on for years!
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Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
According to the press release, both sides agreed that neither had to pay any termination fees. The press release didn't say why, but apparently this must have been something wwhere Corel agreed to waive the 29.5 million termination fee.
I hope that we never have to see Supports X;X;X distros - ever hear of fragmentation? Sure fire way to kill Linux. Sorry, offtopic.
Whenever the whole "Can you be profitable when you're in the free software business?" debate comes up, I've yet to see the "Yes" side fail to bring up Cygnus. The only problem is, it also seems to be the only company that they ever mention. Is Cygnus really the only profitable Free Software-related company out there? (Not dissing Cygnus, I've always been a big fan.)
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Check out Corel's April 19 10-Q Filing with SEC.
"If the proposed merger with Inprise Corporation does not occur, other sources of financing are not secured and/or Corel's operating results do not improve, a cash deficiency may occur within the next three months."
Unless something has changed, they've got about 2 months left...
I thought I made it quite clear that I was not in any way cheerleading CORL stock. I even went the extra step of disclosing that I hold CORL stock (although only a few hundred shares...)
The company has serious problems - I didn't gloss over those. My point was that even a sick company that is already established in the software industry on a non-trivial scale has some valuable attributes missing in the gigabuck IPO companies we've seen lately. I understand that CALD is all IPO cash - that was my *point*!
For all its faults, Corel has sevreral decent products - Word Perfect, in particular, in my experience is still much more stable with large documents than Word - this is why WP is still the most common word processor in the legal, medical transcription, and real estate professions. (Note that I personally dislike the way WP works, but it is clearly superior for that sort of work, and customers like that.)
Corel may or may not make it. My holdings aside, I hope they do make it, if only to ensure commercial alternatives to parts of Microsoft's hegemony.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Hey, don't worry about actually reading the story or anything. Ya know, the part where it says, "Neither firm will pay any termination fees." :P
And actually the $29 million part was only if the Inprise board nixed the deal. If the Inprise shareholders voted the deal down (as has seemed very likely for the last few months -- there's been a pretty strong movement against the merger by a faction of Inprise shareholders), then there'd be no $29 million penalty. I think Corel realized that they wouldn't get the shareholder votes and decided to just end the whole mess before the humiliation of a vote.
I don't blame Borland folks for not wanting to be consumed by the likes of Corel and Cowpland, but I think the breakdown of this deal hurts both companies. Corel's screwed, but Inprise isn't in great shape, either.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Lets face it, they've had one good product - CorelDraw, followed by a string of failures and bungled strategies. I consider them a bandwagon-sitter when it comes to linux, so I don't give them any bonus points for the distro they made.
'nuff said. This is what happens when PHB's don't harness in the venture cap yoyo's and allow them to inflate absolutely everything in the trades despite the fact that the value in the company is nil. Didn't anyone realize the eighties were over. Under current left wing capitalism this sort of economics, like that of Amazon are allowed to go on. Sooner or later it will cascade and pull not only the US economy down to the cellar but also that of most of Europe and China as well. When will the capatalistic inmates be banned from running the words economy.
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
As has been mentioned before, Corel has roughly 5 months of operating capital in the bank, and needed the merge most immediately to acquire Borland's cash reserves.
So here's the situation: Little money left, a ways to go before their Linux investment pays off (even longer without the merger), declining market share in core products like Draw, stagnant sales in Word Perfect office.
Did I miss anything? Maybe this will destroy the part of Corel's brain that contiually wants to compete with Microsoft in their core areas, and get them to focus on something that might make some money.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
Second: I think this is a really good thing for the Linux community. Borland (I refuse to call them inprice) has a tradition of producing excellent development tools. I don't see how the merger with Corel could have done anything but drag them down. I think that Linux's great hope lies in a lot of different vendors, each of which are the best at what they do, not one huge Microsoft-esque vendor that provides everything. We don't need it: let's define standard formats and mechanisms for application interoperability, and let all the vendors (open source, closed source, whatever) duke it out for market share. Now THAT's innovation.
Hopefully, this announcement will not affect Borland's interest in developing for Linux.
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-- Slashdot sucks.
...that I'll stop hearing about the most boring, long-drawn-out and irrelevant business deals ever?
/. thought business news (especially stock prices) were "uninteresting".
I mean really, what distinguishes the Corel/Inprise thing from any other of the multitude of tech mergers except that Corel produced a briefly popular Linux distro that hasn't been heard from since?
BTW, I thought
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Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
The deal went sour because Corel's stock went in the toilet... since the deal would've seen inprise/borland stock holders getting corel stock, and independant report judged it unfair to iprise stock holders.
BlackNova Traders
A little while ago I found a interesting article at MaximumPC that involved the Corel/Interprise. The article explained that Corel faced the real chance of running out of money if the Interprise merger did not happen, interestingly it was considered a done deal that Interprise would agree to the merger (Corel propaganda?). Anyhow, the article said that Corel only had $29 million in cash and $19 million in losses- with the Interprise deal, Corel would of gained $198 million in cash. This could be very bad for Corel- but good or indifferent for Interprise. Here is the article.
I'm glad that WPO2k works for you. It doesn't work for a lot of people (who have been returning it, because it's so bad on their systems).
On my systems, besides the broken window manager interaction, PDFs usually don't export. Normally crashes WINE entirely, but sometimes will just output a PDF using the wrong fonts. Importing Word files, for some reason, makes the whole thing unstable: sometimes I can't save the file to WP format before it crashes. Many templates weren't shipped with the product, even though they show up in the list.
Basically, I have come to expect at least a crash an hour when using WP on imported Word documents. (It's much more stable when you create docs yourself.) To cope with bugs in printings and word reexport, I generally delete and recreate various sections (like imported images).
This isn't really acceptable. It's marginally good enough to do docs on my machine rather than using a Windows box with Word, but for anything not work-related, I use TeX.
I've come to the conclusion that WPO2k is only stable for certain users doing certain tasks. It's certainly not stable for other users.
The point is, I can fix problems in free software. (Been there, done that.) I can trace the source to see if it's a bug in the software or caused by a system configuration.
How am I supposed to fix problems in WPO2k? Even _if_ I want to go tracing wine calls, not all problems are in Wine. (Again, been there, done that.)
May 8, 2000
Re: Borland Securities Litigation Settlement Fund
Claim Nbr.: BOR- XXXXXX-X
Check Amount: $38.09
Dear Class Member:
Attached is a check for your pro-rata share of the Net Settlement Fund in the Borland Securities Litigation. This distribution has been calculated in accordance with the Court approved Plan of Allocation described in the Second Notice of Proposed Settlement previously sent to you.
Please be advised that over 19,489 Proof of Claim forms were filed with total Claims exceeding $203,646,030. The Net Settlement Fund available for distribution is $7,110,752.
In addition, be advised that all applicable taxes have been paid on the interest earned by the fund while it was invested pending distribution. You should consult your tax adviser to determine the tax consequences, if any, of this distribution.
Very truly yours,
MILBERG WEISS BERSHAD HYNES & LERACH LLP
BARRACK, RODOS & BACINE
KAPLAN, KILSHEIMER & FOX
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Some thoughts:
The Borland settlement regards trades made between March 5, 1991 and December 9, 1992. Seems that the wheels of justice [?] turn very s l o w l y. Let's not hold our collective breath waiting for the recent Corel lawsuits to be settled.
You will notice that these crackshot attorneys managed to recover a $7M kitty to cover the $203M total claims from shareholders.
Wonder if their fees were covered proportionally? Anyway, just because a bunch of attorneys has now decided to sue Corel for some outrageous figure does not mean that they will ever collect anywhere near the claimed amount, or anything at all for that matter.
These first 100 shares of my Borland investment cost $37 1/2 in 1992. They were followed by purchases of 500 shares for $15 in 1995 and 300 shares for 14 7/8 in 1996. Sold them all for 5 3/4 in 1999. Boy, that $38 check sure makes me feel better!
What's the point here, beyond the obvious lack of investment skill? [Trust me, there ARE many winners too!] Despite what you have read recently, Corel does not have a corner on lawsuits, declining share price, or management issues; nor is Borland [Inprise] immune to them. Take whatever sanctimonious posts you read from INPR investors with a LARGE grain of salt. And if you ever want to hear about about a flamboyant CEO who went off the deep end, just check out Phillipe Kahn, once shown on the front page of the WSJ dressed for one of his famous toga parties.
Yes, things aren't looking as bright as they were a few months ago. But Corel is just one OEM agreement, one M$-DOJ settlement, one upside surprise quarter from being the hot stock it was last November.
- Connecticut Yankee -
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
The Cure of the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
Are you suggesting that VB is a better environment? If so, my experience is quite a bit different from yours apparently.
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Since it relates to Borland, it might be of interest to those reading this story.
I've written a little piece on kuro5hin on Borland's Kylix, which is their upcoming RAD tool for Linux.
Rather than reporducing it here, go and have a look.
Corel CVS
Corel Linux Source ftp
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
Hemos, we are sending bug reports to SourceForge now. Leave Pater alone. ;-)
I don't think their policy of self-destruction (which certainly exists) had much to do with the latest developments.
They were a company on the verge of bankruptcy (and still are) that was made to look solvent by mindless and europhic buying lacking any fundamentals. The company was extremely smart to go into a merger while the stock was high - it would have meant merging with a company that actually had cash flow. Luckily for Borland they waited long enough and the truth was revealed.
Red hat operates the same way - they are buying companies with real products and revenue streams, and paying for it with stock that is hardly worth the paper it is printed on.
But reading all the posts in here, manu people seem upset at Corel, and accusing them of producing low-quality software.
I've been using WP 2000 on Linux for a while, and it's been a breath of fresh air. Runs smooth, doesn't crash, and allows me to stay in Linux when I need a spreadsheet.
I'm beta testing DRAW and Photopaint for Linux. I use PhotoPaint a great deal, and again, I no longer need to boot Windows to use PhotoPaint.
Corel are delivering quality apps _ON TIME_. no shipping delays. No waiting 3 freeking years for a product. No 190 MB service Pack!!!
I agree that they are following the Linux bandwagon, but what's a company to do? How do you compete with Microsoft??? Everyone who does dies. Linux is Corel's only hope, and as a Linux community, let's praise what Corel are doing. They're giving us good APPS, and at a more-than-reasonable price. I'm sorry, but Gnumeric is just to simple and featureless to consider using.
ya know..as a guy who has been using Linux for quite some time...I remember back when StarWriter only had that damn german dictionary..and was real buggy for Linux..WordPerfect moving to Linux was one of the things that really helped give Linux a boost in my mind. Then they announced their plans for a distribution. I believe that initially Corel's support of Linux was one of the driving forces behind the recent growth of Linux. I am not saying it was THE driving force...and I will grant that companies like Netscape definitely were more important...but I will be one who would thank Corel for their support..even if it was because of their anti-MS mindset. Like it or not...they helped the Linux movement..and now they may be sunk.
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DISCLAIMER: My opinions are held as truth in all courts of law in my world.