Salesforce.com, the on-demand CRM specialist, is doing pretty well for itself. It’s got a solid customer base just shy of 40k. It’s got a suite of powerful enterprise-level Web applications. It’s stock price, presently sitting around $50, is at a decent spot, too.
And all bullet points stated above are reasons for Marc Benioff and his company to pitch themselves for sale to Oracle, the business management software giant. That’s the chatter coming from Tom Foremski of Silicon Valley Watcher, who claims to have gleaned the information from a reliable source, though unnamed.
The figure Salesforce is allegedly aiming at is nearly 50% over its current market price. Benioff is purportedly ready to make Salesforce an Oracle subsidiary for $75 per share. SVW’s Foremski is thinking Larry Ellison should oblige.
But whether Oracle would approve a buy of Salesforce with a $25-per-share premium is really the crux of the issue. That isn’t a small fence to leap over, considering the assets that Salesforce presently has in its repertoire.