Stock Tickers: GOOG, TFSM, VCLK, AQNT, YHOO, MSFT, TWX, IACI
Sometimes it doesn’t matter that the largest behemoth in one area is buying the leader in another when it comes to the competitors of the target. The online banner ad agency competitors of DoubleClick are going to have more work cut out for them and they are going to end up essentially competing against a more formidable online advertising beast. The savior for these companies is that their relative value just grew substantially, and the other search giants may be forced to pursue them whether they want to or not.
Google’s (GOOG) purchase of DoubleClick was announced after Friday’s close for some $3.1 Billion, but we noted that the relative value could be looked at two weeks after the DoubleClick "talk" started really heating up. The competitors of DoubleClick are all gapping up this morning:
aQuantive, Inc. (AQNT) is seeing shares up more than 11% at $31.75 pre-market.
ValueClick (VCLK) is seeing its shares up more than 7% at $31.65 pre-market (to what will be new 52-week highs).
24/7 Real Media (TFSM) is trading up 7% at $9.18 pre-market.
Google is already being challenged somewhat by Microsoft (MSFT) and others over antitrust issues, although this is going to be a tough antitrust battle to prove (particularly if Microsoft is the antritrust challenger). What is more likely is that since Google made the first jump here, you could easily see others forced into "me too" deals. Since Microsoft was the first "merger talks" name with DoubleClick you could easily see them decide to pursue one of these other companies. Companies such as Yahoo! (YHOO), IAC/Interactive (IACI), Time Warner’s (TWX) AOL unit, and others could all decide to to grab the remaining players.
The long and short is that these are all up significantly now from levels just two weeks ago (see our article and price levels from then), and there are only a few decent sized players left out there to acquire.
Jon C. Ogg
April 16, 2007
Jon Ogg can be reached at [email protected]; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.
Top Gaining Stocks
Top Losing Stocks