It’s finally official. Verizon has agreed to acquire Yahoo’s web business for $4.8 billion, ending months of speculation. The deal is expected to close early in 2017.
Investors today are more concerned about the next tech company to be gobbled up by a larger competitor. Here are a few ideas.
Bankrate Inc. (NASDAQ:RATE) is one of the web’s largest publishers of personal finance content through several different websites, most notably bankrate.com and creditcards.com.
These sites collectively attract tens of millions of hits and generate approximately $350 to $400 million in revenue annually.
Shares of the company are depressed because of a minor accounting scandal as well as weak results, giving an acquirer the potential to pick up a proven leader in a lucrative business at approximately 10 times trailing free cash flow.
Another tech company that could easily be acquired is BlackBerry Limited (TSX:BB)(NASDAQ:BBRY). The company is doing a nice job cutting costs, and investors seem to like its move away from hardware into software.
Additionally, new management might be better suited to finally pulling the plug on the company’s troubled handset division, which has turned into a chronic money loser.
Finally, Pandora Media (NYSE:P) looks like it could garner interest, perhaps from a company that wants to compete with Apple or Google in the online music streaming space. The company does have many things going for it including some 80 million active listeners and a great deal of data about its listeners.
