Salesforce still mulls bid for Twitter as shareholders resist: sources
By Greg Roumeliotis and Liana B. Baker
(Reuters) - Salesforce.com Inc (CRM.N) is still deliberating whether it should make an offer for Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) in the face of resistance from Salesforce shareholders over the strategic merits and valuation of such a deal, people familiar with the matter said on Monday.
Twitter shares have lost as much as a third of their value since Oct. 5 on concerns the company has attracted less interest from potential acquirers than previously envisaged. It now has a market capitalization of $12 billion.
Salesforce is deliberating whether it is worth making a lowball offer for Twitter in the coming days based on Twitter's stock performance and any news of other bidders, the people said.
Other potential acquirers such as Alphabet Inc's Google (GOOGL.O) and Walt Disney Co (DIS.N) have backed away from making offers for the Internet company, the people said. There may however be other companies contemplating offers for Twitter whose identity has not yet been reported, some of the sources suggested.
The sources asked not to be identified because the deliberations are confidential. Salesforce declined to comment while Twitter, Google and Disney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Reuters previously reported that Twitter aimed to conclude deliberations about selling itself by Oct. 27, when it reports its third-quarter earnings.
Salesforce.com, run by CEO Marc Benioff, is focused on cloud-based sales and marketing software. Unlike Twitter, its main product is aimed at business users, not consumers. Under Salesforce.com, Twitter could become a corporate tool used to power sentiment analysis and nurture customer relationships.
A potential acquisition of Twitter has weighed down Salesforce's stock since news broke on Sept. 23 that it was vying for Twitter. Its shares rose as much as 7 percent on Monday after a weekend report by Bloomberg News suggested Salesforce was unlikely to make an offer.
Some analysts and investors have questioned why Salesforce would need to own Twitter, when it already licenses the Twitter "firehose" for its new artificial intelligence platform, Einstein.
At Salesforce's annual client conference last week, Benioff said Salesforce considers buying many companies but maintains discipline, and wished Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey "well." These comments tamped out expectations that Salesforce would be an aggressive bidder for Twitter.
Since its founding a decade ago, Twitter has struggled to generate revenue growth and profit, despite having some 313 million average monthly active users and a growing presence as a source of news.
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CRM
10/10 CLOSE: UP 4.19/share to 75.10/share
EPS: 0.318
P/E: 228.476
BETA: 1.589
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Earnings per share (EPS) is the portion of a company's profit allocated to each outstanding share of common stock. Earnings per share serves as an indicator of a company's profitability.
Calculated as:
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The price to earnings ratio (PE Ratio) is the measure of the share price relative to the annual net income earned by the firm per share. PE ratio shows current investor demand for a company share. A high PE ratio generally indicates increased demand because investors anticipate earnings growth in the future. The PE ratio has units of years, which can be interpreted as the number of years of earnings to pay back purchase price.
PE ratio is often referred to as the "multiple" because it demonstrates how much an investor is willing to pay for one dollar of earnings. PE Ratios are sometimes calculated using estimations of next year's earnings per share in the denominator. When this happens, it is usually noted.
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Formula
Price to Earnings Ratio = Price / Earnings Per Share (EPS)
(Note: YCharts uses the Trailing Twelve Months (TTM) sum of Net EPS Diluted in the denominator)
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A beta of 1 indicates that the security's price moves with the market. A beta of less than 1 means that the security is theoretically less volatile than the market. A beta of greater than 1 indicates that the security's price is theoretically more volatile than the market. For example, if a stock's beta is 1.2, it's theoretically 20% more volatile than the market. Conversely, if an ETF's beta is 0.65, it is theoretically 35% less volatile than the market. Therefore, the fund's excess return is expected to underperform the benchmark by 35% in up markets and outperform by 35% during down markets.