IPO
Shares of Box, the online storage company that went public last Friday, have performed well in their first week of trading. As of Friday 1 PM ET, the stock was priced at $19.05, well above the $14 the company per share the company commanded in its IPO. As the first major public offering by a technology company this year, the success should bode well for others looking to tap the public markets.
M&A
After scooping up Issuacell in November, and finalizing the deal just this past month, AT&T announced Monday that it will spend $1.875 billion to acquire Nextel Mexico, the country’s fifth largest mobile provider. Together, the two acquisitions have created for AT&T a network that now spans 400 million consumers and businesses in both Mexico and the United States. It also comes alongside AT&T’s pending merger with DirecTV, a key component of which is expansion into Latin America.
Travelocity, a pioneer in online travel booking founded in 1996, has been purchased by Expedia for $280 million from the Sabre Corporation. The move is in keeping with consolidation in the travel booking industry in recent years. Expedia also owns the Hotels.com and Hotwire properties, while its competitor Priceline recently purchased Kayak and OpenTable. Another, Orbitz, is reportedly looking to find a buyer.
Dropbox has acquired Pixelapse, a collaborative software tool that graduated from Y Combinator in 2012. The company raised equity financing from Spark Capital, also in 2012. “We started Pixelapse with the mission of building the definitive version control and collaboration platform for creatives…The prospect of developing products at Dropbox that expand this vision to millions of users is tremendously exciting,” read a statement on the Pixelapse blog.
Lattice Semiconductor, a publicly-traded Hillsboro, Oregon-based chip manufacturer for industrial application, is acquiring fellow chipmaker Silicon Image for $600 million. At $7.30 a share, Lattice is paying a 34% premium over Silicon’s publicly traded equity. The deal is being made with $350 million in borrowed funds, according to OregonLive.com.
Prosper, the San Francisco-based peer-to-peer lending platform, has paid $21 million in cash to acquire American Healthcare Lending, a loan originator for individuals looking to finance elective medical procedures, according to The New York Times. Prosper has raised nearly $190 million from Sequoia, Accel Partners, and Black Rock, among others, since its founding in 2006. It competes with Lending Club, which held its IPO in December.
Solar Winds, a publicly-traded, Austin, TX-based IT software management company, acquired Librato, an enterprise SaaS firm. The deal was completed through $40 million in cash. Librato had raised $5 million from investors Harrison Metal, Baseline Ventures, and Cowboy Ventures.