Seagate 2
Seagate 2
Seagate 2
Management
Seagate Technology Buyout
Group 1
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1. Why is Seagate undertaking this transaction? Is it necessary to divest the
Veritas shares in a separate transaction? Who are the winners and losers
resulting from the transaction?
In May 1999, Seagate Technology sold its Network & Storage Management
Group to VERITAS Software. It received approximately 155 million shares of VERITAS
stock, making it VERITASs largest stockholder with an ownership stake over 40%.
However, the market did not recognize the full potential value of VERITASs stake
and making Seagatess disk drive business with negative value. Therefore, it was
becoming more difficult to provide proper incentives to employees, and convince its
shareholders. It is necessary to have this transaction. Otherwise, Seagate had to pay
huge tax liabilities when they sold VERITAS stocks.
In addition, winners are the majority shareholders of Seagate ,VERITAS and
Silver lake group. As Seagates stock price increased 25% and shareholders of
Seagate can benefit from it. For VERITAS, their stock price increased more than
200%. For Silver lake, they was optimistic about the disk drive industry so that it will
generate great revenue in the future. The loser will be the minority shareholders of
Seagate as Seagates shares may be lack liquidity.
2. What are the benefits of leveraged buyouts? Is the rigid disk drive industry
conducive to a leveraged buyout?
LBOs have become very attractive as they usually represent a win-win situation
for the financial sponsor and banks. The financial sponsor can increase the returns on
his equity by employing the leverage, and banks can make substantially higher margins
when supporting the financing of LBOs as compared to usual corporate lending,
because the interest chargeable is that much higher. Investment returns from buyouts
came from business efficiency improvements, improved management incentives, and
increased interest tax shields when the buyout is financed with debt. In addition, in
some cases buyouts provided an opportunity to purchase undervalued assets at a
favorable price.
However, to support the high levels of debt, LBO firms typically targeted
companies that operated in mature industries, generated stable and predictable cash
flows, and had significant tangible assets that could be used as collateral. On the
contrary, LBO firms tended to avoid technology businesses where the combination of
rapid growth, short product cycles, and substantial demand uncertainty made cash
flows hard to predict. The lack of tangible assets in many technology businesses
reduced attractiveness to LBD specialists. Accordingly, the characteristics of the disk
drive business did not make it an easy place to do LBOs. Price competition was intense,
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product life cycles were extremely short, and the technological sophistication of disk
drives required large expenditures on R&D, as well as manufacturing capacity to meet
customers specification quickly. For these reasons, LBOs were taken very
conservatively in rigid disk drive industry.
3. Luczo and the buyout team plan to finance their acquisition of Seagates
operating assets using a combination of debt and equity. How much debt
would you recommend that they use? Why?
Revenues
Gross Margin
EBITDA
-NWC INCREASERevenue*26%- NWC (52.06) 207.48 298.22 244.40 237.12 245.18 257.66
FREE CASH FLOW 191.06 (82.48) (60.22) 75.60 269.88 369.82 445.34
Discount rate=15%(assumed by MORGAN) 0.8695652 0.7561440 0.6575160 0.5717530 0.4971770 0.4323280 0.3759370
Present of FREE CASH FLOW 568.88 166.14 (62.37) (39.60) 43.22 134.18 159.88 167.42
We use the average revenue growth rate of downside case to be our Growth rate.
Growth rate=6.71%, and we assume the FCF would grow forever.
Free Cash Flow $91 $61 $135 $111 $257 $267 $248 $3,187
PV $1,655