Reevaluating a Best Buy Buyout

Investing

Published: July 2, 2012 10:54 am

Last Updated: April 28, 2020 4:00 am

Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE: BBY) is surging in early trading on this merger Monday. While there is no direct Best Buy news this morning there is ample speculation that this will be the next merger announced.

A video on the Star Tribune is getting some credit ahead of the shareholder meeting Thursday over whether or not founder and the recently departed Chairman Richard Schulze will make a play for the company. The two big questions for the meeting: What will Dick Schulze do? Also, will he even show up? The problem is that if you watch the video it doesn’t really leave any answers.

We just featured Best Buy as being among “The Next Mergers For 2012” this morning and that may be just one more part of a larger puzzle. We would normally discount a move of this magnitude but in only 75 minutes since the open of the market the stock has traded over 9 million shares to match its average daily volume. This is on a day where volume elsewhere is light in stocks due to many traders taking the week off for the Fourth of July. The gain is 10.2% to $23.11 and that is up from a recent low of $17.53.

The caveat here is a massive one. If Schulze decides to just sell his shares, there are no other apparent buyers and the merger-hope premium would likely deflate rapidly. And painfully.

JON C. OGG

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