How Many Companies Can One Company Buy? (ORCL, ARTG)

Oracle Corp. (NASDAQ: ORCL) might as well be called “King Of Acquisitions.”  The company has acquired more companies than can easily be  counted, and now it is acquiring Art Technology Group Inc. (NASDAQ: ARTG) so that the enterprise software giant can have access to more e-commerce software for clients.

The Art Technology buyout is $6.00 per share, which is more than a 45% premium and comes to nearly $1 billion.  Art Technology had also reported solid Q3 earnings and revenues and said that demand for its products continues to rise.  The company’s product license bookings were up more than 35%.

The stock used to be far higher back in 2000 during the tech bubble and the company has been public since 1999.  With a $943 million market cap at today’s elevated share price of $5.96, Thomson Reuters is looking for revenues of $199.35 million in 2010 and $225.7 million in 2011.

Art Tech has a retail focus and is further evidence that Oracle is getting further and further into industry-oriented and segment-oriented software, services, and applications.

Oracle counts more than 370,000 customers, which make up all 100 of the Fortune 100 and come from more than 145 countries.

While you have to always rely on your own fact-checking when it comes to Wikipedia, the site there lists more than 30 buyouts of public or private entities since the start of 2006.  Other large acquisitions over the years include Sun Microsystems, BEA Systems, Hyperion, Siebel Systems and Peoplesoft.

Oracle shares are up nearly 1% at $29.41, just under a 52-week high and multi-year high of $29.71.

JON C. OGG