Video Analysis From Hoover's Editors
Computer Software Development
NAVTEQ Corporation
Wanna make it to the top of The Hoover's Index? One tried-and-true way is to get a household-name company to pony up a few billion dollars to acquire you. Easy, right? That's what NAVTEQ did in October, when it agreed to be purchased by cell phone titan Nokia for the princely sum of $8.1 billion. Even though NAVTEQ brought in less than $600 million in revenues last year with its digital location database, Nokia believes that the company - whose maps of Europe, the Middle East, and North America have powered the mapping services of Yahoo!, Google, and Garmin - will give it a leg up in a growing market for mobile location-finding applications.
Cosmetics & Beauty Supply
Ulta Salon, Cosmetics & Fragrance, Inc.
Don't hate Ulta because its IPO was beautiful. The company commanded the market's attention late in October, when its IPO shares roared up the charts. Ulta's underwriters priced its stock at $18 per share, but demand was so high that shares debuted on October 25 at $33 and were still above $34 at the end of the month. The company operates more than 200 beauty store/salons in about 25 states across the U.S. Its stores offer cosmetics, fragrances and hair care products, with an increasing emphasis on luxury brands. The stores also offer salon services including hairstyling, manicures and massages. Now that the company has gone public, it plans to continue its expansion; Ulta aims to operate as many as 1,000 locations throughout the country someday.
Breweries
Molson Coors Brewing Company
Cheap beer for everyone! That seems to be the theme of the deal announced in early October to unite the U.S. operations of SABMiller and Molson Coors. It continues the trend of consolidation in Big Beer; SABMiller and Molson Coors were themselves each formed by the merger of large and well-established brewery companies. The new deal is intended to pit the Miller/Coors group against the titanic Budweiser franchise of Anheuser-Busch, but the segment of the market over which these giants will be fighting (call it the light, sweet, bland segment) hasn't seen much growth in recent years. The deal also undoes a substantial chunk of the merger that Molson and Coors completed just two years ago.
Manufacturing Sector
Tektronix, Inc.
The sun rises in the East; the Pope remains devoutly Roman Catholic; and Danaher acquires another company. This time around, the Danaher acquisitions machine is putting down $2.5 billion to buy Tektronix, an old-school manufacturer of electronic instruments. In fact, "Tek" is an electrical engineer's dream: its product lineup is well stocked with gear like oscilloscopes (it's the biggest maker of them in the world) and logic analyzers. The company has also broken important technological ground in the audiovisual realm - work that has earned Tek a shelfload of technical Emmys. Danaher is one of the most acquisitive companies around: its diverse units make everything from Craftsman hand tools to Sybron orthodontic supplies. Tektronix will join Danaher's stable of testing and instrumentation subsidiaries, which includes Fluke Corporation, Acme-Cleveland Corp., and Germany's Dr. Bruno Lange GmbH.